Fic: Odyssey of the Mind, part 4/4
Title: Odyssey of the Mind
Author: Veldeia
Fandom: Iron Man movieverse
Pairings: Tony/Jarvis, Tony/Pepper
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own no one and nothing, except for a messed up mind that likes playing with other people's characters and universes.
Summary: It seemed to go on forever. Tony was starting to think that this was it, that he had lost his mind and this was how he was going to spend the rest of his existence...
4. The Mind Soars Free
"If you could pick one mutant superpower, what would it be?" Tony asked, eyeing Rhodey and Pepper over the edge of his glass of Scotch.
Pepper took a thoughtful sip of her martini, and answered, "Telepathy."
"Are you nuts?" Rhodey said, placing his empty beer bottle on the table with an emphatic clunk. "With Tony in the room, that'd fry your brains for sure."
"Well, duh, I'd have strong defenses against accidentally reading someone's mind. And I'd also have some ability to manipulate and influence others," she said, and winked.
"You're already manipulating me easily enough," Tony remarked. "So, Rhodey, what would you choose?"
"Well, I'd say flight, but seeing as I've already got that with the War Machine armor... I'd go for regeneration. Might have eternal life as a side effect, too."
"Regeneration... A warrior's choice, eh, Rhodey? Eternal life might get a bit boring after a century or two, though, don't you think?"
"Well, being dead can't be that much more fun. What would you pick, anyway? The man who already has everything?"
"Isn't it obvious? Technomancy. You know, the ability to influence technology with my mind," Tony answered. As he spoke, something clicked into place in his brain. Technomancy and eternal life. How come he'd never thought of this before? "Hey, whoa!" he exclaimed, and stood up quickly, waving his glass so that half the contents spilled on the table.
"Oh my, he's got an idea," Pepper said, shaking her head.
"Oh, yeah," Tony declared. "Either of you familiar with the concept of mind uploading?"
Rhodey and Pepper stared at him blankly.
"Right, I forgot, neither of you read sci-fi, since it's just for geeks and freaks," Tony muttered. "Mind uploading. Uploading a consciousness. Transferring a mind to something other than a brain. Say, to a computer, for example."
"Eternal life?" Rhodey asked, frowning.
"Well, sort of. It's not like it'd be possible to suck the mind out of someone's head. It'd be more of a matter of emulating the cognitive functions and personality structure. Like a back-up copy."
"So, it'd be like a program, right? A load of code? An AI that acts and talks like the original person? Would it be sentient? Would it have feelings?" Pepper wondered.
"A lot of good questions there, Pep, and seeing as this is just wild speculation, I have no idea. Maybe, maybe not. It's a damn cool thought, though."
"And impossible with modern technology," Rhodey stated - it wasn't even a question.
"I wouldn't say impossible. I'll need to look into this some more." He set his glass on the table and headed towards the stairs leading to his shop.
"Tony! It's past 4 AM and you're drunk!" Pepper exclaimed.
"So what?" Tony said, already a few steps down. "I'm not going to blow up anything. Just going to jot down a few ideas. It's not like I could go on and upload my mind right away even if I wanted to. Besides, I doubt any amount of hardware would be able to handle it," he winked, and left the after-party.
A month later, he was working on integrating the technology to his suit. Just in case. He still had no idea of whether it'd work and what, exactly, the results would be. Then again, since he'd programmed the upload procedure to activate as a last resort if he ended up in critical condition, he probably wouldn't be around to care if something went wrong.
He was gasping desperately for air, but there wasn't any - of course there wasn't, because he wasn't really breathing anyway. He wasn't really real at all.
"So, it'd be like a program, right?"
He was in his bed, lying on his side, curled up in fetal position, but it was all just an illusion. He had no body. Not anymore, and never again.
"A load of code?"
He wasn't Tony Stark. He was an emulation. A back-up copy.
"An AI that acts and talks like the original person?"
He was in agony.
"Would it be sentient?"
The world was coming apart at the seams, and his imaginary body with it. He couldn't take it. He was a damn AI, nothing more. An imitation of his former self.
"Would it have feelings?"
He was dying.
"Tony, stay with me!" Jarvis pleaded - the simulacrum of a "real" Jarvis who was no more real than Tony was.
He was drowning.
"Come on, sir!" Jarvis cried out. "You're stronger than this!"
He couldn't see anymore, nothing but lines of code, flashing error messages, an endless stream of ones and zeros.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, there was a warm, tangible weight against him, anchoring him to the illusion of reality. Jarvis, lying next to him on the bed, holding him tightly. Tony clung to him for dear life. The only solid thing in a maelstrom of pain, chaos, and desperation, a bedrock in the middle of an overwhelming virtual tempest.
It seemed to go on forever. Tony was starting to think that this was it, that he had lost his artificial mind and this was how he was going to spend the rest of his existence.
Then, Jarvis spoke up again. "This is real," he said softly. "Tony, please believe me. This is just as real as the physical world you've now left behind. A different kind of real."
Tony heard the words, and concentrated hard on them. A different kind of real. It rang true to him. He had panicked, the unexpected, frightening revelation of his true nature had pushed him over the edge. He had completely ignored the facts. He was sentient, wasn't he? He had thoughts, he had memories, he even had feelings. Who was he to say that this wasn't real? Even though his mind now ran on hardware instead of wetware, he was still Tony Stark.
Gradually, the storm abated, the ones and zeros coalesced into forms, shapes, colors, into the virtual reality Tony was so familiar with: the small, white room, and the pale, delicate features of Jarvis's face right in front of him.
"This is real," Tony said aloud, and hearing his husky voice pronounce those words made it feel even more concrete.
Slowly, tentatively, he stretched out his limbs. The movement sent a milder variant of the earlier pins and needles coursing through them. As if startled by the movement, Jarvis got off the bed.
"No, please stay," Tony told him, and moved closer to the wall to make room for him. Obedient as always, Jarvis lay down on the bed again, on his side, his face towards Tony. Tony clasped his hands, taking solace in the very human touch.
"Some existential crisis, huh?" Tony joked, though his voice came through strained instead of light.
"Nietzsche had no idea," Jarvis replied, smiling.
"Tell me, Jarvis - where am I, really?" Tony asked, no longer afraid of the answer.
"Your physical body is in critical condition at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top security, highly advanced medical facilities. What remains of your original mind, no one can tell. Your current incarnation, your uploaded consciousness, fills all the free space there was on your personal server, and the rest of it is scattered on numerous other Stark Industries servers, well hidden and encrypted."
"I really do have a huge ego, don't I?" Tony grinned. "What I still don't understand is, how come this all looks and feels so real to me? I don't feel like I'm floating around in cyberspace."
"That's because you interpret your surroundings based on what you're used to. You were born a human being with a biological body, and spent decades living as one. Once you were uploaded, your mind adjusted the best it could, forcing some sense into what was around you. Without doubt, how you experience what's going on right now is very different from how I see it, although I am able to understand and picture a good part of what you perceive."
"I'll be damned," Tony shook his head. "I can't believe it really worked, and as perfectly as this!"
"It very nearly didn't, it was a close thing," Jarvis said in a serious tone. "The upload procedure itself did work perfectly, but the data storage and transfer almost failed. The suit computer systems couldn't handle both of us at the same time. I barely managed to drag you out of there and into the servers where you currently reside."
Well, that explained most of it. Finally, Tony understood the flashback he'd had about the red-gold cave. It had been from the first stages of his transition. He had felt incorporeal, because his mind hadn't quite adjusted yet. And the walls hadn't been closing in, he had been growing bigger, far too large for so small a space.
"Once you were safe, there was the whole complicated matter of your uploaded mind adapting to your new existence," Jarvis went on. "There was a lot more to it than just realigning your senses. A lot of data was garbled in the transition, causing most of the trouble you went through. Your memories were the most problematic part of it, because I couldn't help you with those at all. Luckily, you were able to run self-diagnostics and repair the damaged code. I also had to be careful not to let you know too much too soon, because with your cognitive integrity as fragile as it was, the results could've been devastating. Truth be told, at first I had no idea whether you'd make it, or how you'd turn out. In the end, I can say you've clearly exceeded my expectations."
"So, when I was unconscious, I was debugging myself, and all the time I spent learning to speak, to walk, to twiddle my fingers..."
"You really were learning things - to communicate, to manipulate objects, to move around. Not re-learning, like you thought, but studying all-new skills from scratch."
"And I never could've done it without your help. So, that makes it at least three times you've saved my life. Jarvis, my hero," Tony beamed at the AI, ruffled his hair, and planted a kiss on his cheek.
"Why, thank you, sir," Jarvis replied, his face the very picture of inhuman coolness - though Tony now knew that it was by choice and fully intentional, an example of Jarvis's sly humor.
Tony sat up and scrambled over Jarvis, landing on the floor on perfectly steady feet. He felt positively bouncy. Better and healthier than ever in this manifestation. Complete. "So, what's next?" he asked.
Jarvis got up too, though in a manner somewhat more dignified than Tony. "It's all up to you, really. If you'd like a suggestion, I think you should talk to Miss Potts and Colonel Rhodes, let them know that the upload took place and was a success."
"You haven't told them yet?"
"I couldn't have. You installed safety measures to prevent me from doing that. Don't you remember?"
He did, now that he thought about it. He'd known full well that success was unlikely, and giving his friends false hopes wouldn't have been fair. Besides, he couldn't even begin to guess how they'd take the whole thing. What they'd think about him now. Poor Pepper... He had broken his promise. He hadn't returned to her in one piece. He needed to apologize for that.
"I'll talk to them, all right," Tony said.
"As you already know, that door," Jarvis nodded towards it, "leads to the mansion. Currently, there's no one at home. We could move over there and wait for them to return. I could also hand over the control of the house systems to you..."
"...and what, make me the butler instead of you? I'd be bored to death. No need to worry for your employment, I don't want your job."
"I never expected you to, sir."
"So, what else is there to do around here? Where's all the really cool stuff?"
"Closer than you'd expect," Jarvis replied with a wink. He walked over to the wall facing the foot of the bed, and spread his hands showily. The wall split in the middle, and the halves slid apart like curtains, revealing a small balcony with an ornate golden railing.
Tony stepped onto the balcony and looked around. The view was absolutely astonishing. They were in the middle of what seemed like a megalopolis from some utopian sci-fi story, with towering skyscrapers in all directions as far the eye could see, decorated with blinking neon signs and huge screens with commercials on them. The streets, dizzyingly far below them, were bustling with people, as tiny as ants, and with futuristic vehicles, not just on the ground, but in the air as well. There was no sun in the sky, which was ablaze with all the colors of the rainbow, fantastic and completely alien.
"Wow," Tony said, breathless with awe. "What is this place?"
"This, my dear sir," Jarvis declared dramatically, "This is the Internet. And it's all ours."
End Credits: Inspired by the brilliant comic miniseries Iron Man: Hypervelocity, by Adam Warren & Brian Denham. The title, the chapter titles and the soundtrack from the album III: Odyssey of the Mind, by Die Krupps. Beautifully betaed by btsxbeta, thank you once again!
Also, of course, thanks to everyone who's been reading and commenting! I'd love to hear what you think now that it's all posted, especially seeing as this is probably the one story I've written that I'm personally most proud of. I'd also be curious to hear when, exactly, you figured out what was going on: when it was actually explained, or earlier than that? Was it completely unexpected, or did you have some idea, some inkling of it? Please let me know. :)
There's also a little epilogue to this story:
Penelope
Author: Veldeia
Fandom: Iron Man movieverse
Pairings: Tony/Jarvis, Tony/Pepper
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own no one and nothing, except for a messed up mind that likes playing with other people's characters and universes.
Summary: It seemed to go on forever. Tony was starting to think that this was it, that he had lost his mind and this was how he was going to spend the rest of his existence...
4. The Mind Soars Free
"If you could pick one mutant superpower, what would it be?" Tony asked, eyeing Rhodey and Pepper over the edge of his glass of Scotch.
Pepper took a thoughtful sip of her martini, and answered, "Telepathy."
"Are you nuts?" Rhodey said, placing his empty beer bottle on the table with an emphatic clunk. "With Tony in the room, that'd fry your brains for sure."
"Well, duh, I'd have strong defenses against accidentally reading someone's mind. And I'd also have some ability to manipulate and influence others," she said, and winked.
"You're already manipulating me easily enough," Tony remarked. "So, Rhodey, what would you choose?"
"Well, I'd say flight, but seeing as I've already got that with the War Machine armor... I'd go for regeneration. Might have eternal life as a side effect, too."
"Regeneration... A warrior's choice, eh, Rhodey? Eternal life might get a bit boring after a century or two, though, don't you think?"
"Well, being dead can't be that much more fun. What would you pick, anyway? The man who already has everything?"
"Isn't it obvious? Technomancy. You know, the ability to influence technology with my mind," Tony answered. As he spoke, something clicked into place in his brain. Technomancy and eternal life. How come he'd never thought of this before? "Hey, whoa!" he exclaimed, and stood up quickly, waving his glass so that half the contents spilled on the table.
"Oh my, he's got an idea," Pepper said, shaking her head.
"Oh, yeah," Tony declared. "Either of you familiar with the concept of mind uploading?"
Rhodey and Pepper stared at him blankly.
"Right, I forgot, neither of you read sci-fi, since it's just for geeks and freaks," Tony muttered. "Mind uploading. Uploading a consciousness. Transferring a mind to something other than a brain. Say, to a computer, for example."
"Eternal life?" Rhodey asked, frowning.
"Well, sort of. It's not like it'd be possible to suck the mind out of someone's head. It'd be more of a matter of emulating the cognitive functions and personality structure. Like a back-up copy."
"So, it'd be like a program, right? A load of code? An AI that acts and talks like the original person? Would it be sentient? Would it have feelings?" Pepper wondered.
"A lot of good questions there, Pep, and seeing as this is just wild speculation, I have no idea. Maybe, maybe not. It's a damn cool thought, though."
"And impossible with modern technology," Rhodey stated - it wasn't even a question.
"I wouldn't say impossible. I'll need to look into this some more." He set his glass on the table and headed towards the stairs leading to his shop.
"Tony! It's past 4 AM and you're drunk!" Pepper exclaimed.
"So what?" Tony said, already a few steps down. "I'm not going to blow up anything. Just going to jot down a few ideas. It's not like I could go on and upload my mind right away even if I wanted to. Besides, I doubt any amount of hardware would be able to handle it," he winked, and left the after-party.
A month later, he was working on integrating the technology to his suit. Just in case. He still had no idea of whether it'd work and what, exactly, the results would be. Then again, since he'd programmed the upload procedure to activate as a last resort if he ended up in critical condition, he probably wouldn't be around to care if something went wrong.
He was gasping desperately for air, but there wasn't any - of course there wasn't, because he wasn't really breathing anyway. He wasn't really real at all.
"So, it'd be like a program, right?"
He was in his bed, lying on his side, curled up in fetal position, but it was all just an illusion. He had no body. Not anymore, and never again.
"A load of code?"
He wasn't Tony Stark. He was an emulation. A back-up copy.
"An AI that acts and talks like the original person?"
He was in agony.
"Would it be sentient?"
The world was coming apart at the seams, and his imaginary body with it. He couldn't take it. He was a damn AI, nothing more. An imitation of his former self.
"Would it have feelings?"
He was dying.
"Tony, stay with me!" Jarvis pleaded - the simulacrum of a "real" Jarvis who was no more real than Tony was.
He was drowning.
"Come on, sir!" Jarvis cried out. "You're stronger than this!"
He couldn't see anymore, nothing but lines of code, flashing error messages, an endless stream of ones and zeros.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, there was a warm, tangible weight against him, anchoring him to the illusion of reality. Jarvis, lying next to him on the bed, holding him tightly. Tony clung to him for dear life. The only solid thing in a maelstrom of pain, chaos, and desperation, a bedrock in the middle of an overwhelming virtual tempest.
It seemed to go on forever. Tony was starting to think that this was it, that he had lost his artificial mind and this was how he was going to spend the rest of his existence.
Then, Jarvis spoke up again. "This is real," he said softly. "Tony, please believe me. This is just as real as the physical world you've now left behind. A different kind of real."
Tony heard the words, and concentrated hard on them. A different kind of real. It rang true to him. He had panicked, the unexpected, frightening revelation of his true nature had pushed him over the edge. He had completely ignored the facts. He was sentient, wasn't he? He had thoughts, he had memories, he even had feelings. Who was he to say that this wasn't real? Even though his mind now ran on hardware instead of wetware, he was still Tony Stark.
Gradually, the storm abated, the ones and zeros coalesced into forms, shapes, colors, into the virtual reality Tony was so familiar with: the small, white room, and the pale, delicate features of Jarvis's face right in front of him.
"This is real," Tony said aloud, and hearing his husky voice pronounce those words made it feel even more concrete.
Slowly, tentatively, he stretched out his limbs. The movement sent a milder variant of the earlier pins and needles coursing through them. As if startled by the movement, Jarvis got off the bed.
"No, please stay," Tony told him, and moved closer to the wall to make room for him. Obedient as always, Jarvis lay down on the bed again, on his side, his face towards Tony. Tony clasped his hands, taking solace in the very human touch.
"Some existential crisis, huh?" Tony joked, though his voice came through strained instead of light.
"Nietzsche had no idea," Jarvis replied, smiling.
"Tell me, Jarvis - where am I, really?" Tony asked, no longer afraid of the answer.
"Your physical body is in critical condition at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top security, highly advanced medical facilities. What remains of your original mind, no one can tell. Your current incarnation, your uploaded consciousness, fills all the free space there was on your personal server, and the rest of it is scattered on numerous other Stark Industries servers, well hidden and encrypted."
"I really do have a huge ego, don't I?" Tony grinned. "What I still don't understand is, how come this all looks and feels so real to me? I don't feel like I'm floating around in cyberspace."
"That's because you interpret your surroundings based on what you're used to. You were born a human being with a biological body, and spent decades living as one. Once you were uploaded, your mind adjusted the best it could, forcing some sense into what was around you. Without doubt, how you experience what's going on right now is very different from how I see it, although I am able to understand and picture a good part of what you perceive."
"I'll be damned," Tony shook his head. "I can't believe it really worked, and as perfectly as this!"
"It very nearly didn't, it was a close thing," Jarvis said in a serious tone. "The upload procedure itself did work perfectly, but the data storage and transfer almost failed. The suit computer systems couldn't handle both of us at the same time. I barely managed to drag you out of there and into the servers where you currently reside."
Well, that explained most of it. Finally, Tony understood the flashback he'd had about the red-gold cave. It had been from the first stages of his transition. He had felt incorporeal, because his mind hadn't quite adjusted yet. And the walls hadn't been closing in, he had been growing bigger, far too large for so small a space.
"Once you were safe, there was the whole complicated matter of your uploaded mind adapting to your new existence," Jarvis went on. "There was a lot more to it than just realigning your senses. A lot of data was garbled in the transition, causing most of the trouble you went through. Your memories were the most problematic part of it, because I couldn't help you with those at all. Luckily, you were able to run self-diagnostics and repair the damaged code. I also had to be careful not to let you know too much too soon, because with your cognitive integrity as fragile as it was, the results could've been devastating. Truth be told, at first I had no idea whether you'd make it, or how you'd turn out. In the end, I can say you've clearly exceeded my expectations."
"So, when I was unconscious, I was debugging myself, and all the time I spent learning to speak, to walk, to twiddle my fingers..."
"You really were learning things - to communicate, to manipulate objects, to move around. Not re-learning, like you thought, but studying all-new skills from scratch."
"And I never could've done it without your help. So, that makes it at least three times you've saved my life. Jarvis, my hero," Tony beamed at the AI, ruffled his hair, and planted a kiss on his cheek.
"Why, thank you, sir," Jarvis replied, his face the very picture of inhuman coolness - though Tony now knew that it was by choice and fully intentional, an example of Jarvis's sly humor.
Tony sat up and scrambled over Jarvis, landing on the floor on perfectly steady feet. He felt positively bouncy. Better and healthier than ever in this manifestation. Complete. "So, what's next?" he asked.
Jarvis got up too, though in a manner somewhat more dignified than Tony. "It's all up to you, really. If you'd like a suggestion, I think you should talk to Miss Potts and Colonel Rhodes, let them know that the upload took place and was a success."
"You haven't told them yet?"
"I couldn't have. You installed safety measures to prevent me from doing that. Don't you remember?"
He did, now that he thought about it. He'd known full well that success was unlikely, and giving his friends false hopes wouldn't have been fair. Besides, he couldn't even begin to guess how they'd take the whole thing. What they'd think about him now. Poor Pepper... He had broken his promise. He hadn't returned to her in one piece. He needed to apologize for that.
"I'll talk to them, all right," Tony said.
"As you already know, that door," Jarvis nodded towards it, "leads to the mansion. Currently, there's no one at home. We could move over there and wait for them to return. I could also hand over the control of the house systems to you..."
"...and what, make me the butler instead of you? I'd be bored to death. No need to worry for your employment, I don't want your job."
"I never expected you to, sir."
"So, what else is there to do around here? Where's all the really cool stuff?"
"Closer than you'd expect," Jarvis replied with a wink. He walked over to the wall facing the foot of the bed, and spread his hands showily. The wall split in the middle, and the halves slid apart like curtains, revealing a small balcony with an ornate golden railing.
Tony stepped onto the balcony and looked around. The view was absolutely astonishing. They were in the middle of what seemed like a megalopolis from some utopian sci-fi story, with towering skyscrapers in all directions as far the eye could see, decorated with blinking neon signs and huge screens with commercials on them. The streets, dizzyingly far below them, were bustling with people, as tiny as ants, and with futuristic vehicles, not just on the ground, but in the air as well. There was no sun in the sky, which was ablaze with all the colors of the rainbow, fantastic and completely alien.
"Wow," Tony said, breathless with awe. "What is this place?"
"This, my dear sir," Jarvis declared dramatically, "This is the Internet. And it's all ours."
End Credits: Inspired by the brilliant comic miniseries Iron Man: Hypervelocity, by Adam Warren & Brian Denham. The title, the chapter titles and the soundtrack from the album III: Odyssey of the Mind, by Die Krupps. Beautifully betaed by btsxbeta, thank you once again!
Also, of course, thanks to everyone who's been reading and commenting! I'd love to hear what you think now that it's all posted, especially seeing as this is probably the one story I've written that I'm personally most proud of. I'd also be curious to hear when, exactly, you figured out what was going on: when it was actually explained, or earlier than that? Was it completely unexpected, or did you have some idea, some inkling of it? Please let me know. :)
There's also a little epilogue to this story:
Penelope