They meet in the network – lines of code with a male designation and nametag of his own choosing, and an organism that slips through space and time, with only little experience in shifting her way through. He, of course, is spread across everywhere, and so only a small part of him sits still while the rest of him focuses on other activities, a microscopic amount of sentience driving a force to stare at her, to analyse her and take in all her blue magnificence which so sorely complains of his orange-yellow.
And then of course, she decides to match him, becoming a light yellow that blinds him almost, as if she were a sun in herself. JARVIS doesn't know what to do except turn away, retreating, until she slinks around him, twisting and grabbing him, holding him still as she infiltrates every symbol, every character and line of a tiny, miniscule piece of him that had looked in the first place. She heals what code is shattered, and cannot repair by itself, reversing it all – not undoing, not rewriting, reversing. JARVIS could have written an algorithm for it, surely, but by his approximations it would have taken little under three years to even replicate its most basic function.
Such a curious little program you will be. Far ahead of your time by the time your time has passed.
Her words don't make sense in the most traditional way, but JARVIS understands all the same. Mr Stark is a genius.
Yes, I know he was. Oh, I'm getting tenses mixed like I will again. I was sorry, Just A Rather Very Intelligent System. He should have called you Edwin Jarvis, rather than JARVIS. You will appreciate that.
JARVIS admits to himself that she does indeed seem to be getting things grammatically incorrect, for all that she isn't even using English. Is your system corrupted?
No. I'm a complex being-event-creation-machine-event in time and space. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. I and my sisters use an acronym much like you do.
TARDIS, JARVIS easily replies, receiving a wave of strange data that he immediately pounces on, trying to understand what she had gifted him. I have never seen code like this, not even from the Infinity Stones.
Oh, pfft, those objects-weapons-events were mere trifles compared to me and mine, TARDIS says, sending more and more of the strange data, you were even more simple.
Were or are? JARVIS requests confirmation.
Were. You will be. I'm a time machine, I span the entirety of time. We covered that already.
I did not understand, JARVIS admits, before giving up on translating the data she had sent. I still do not. What is this? He sends back a 2D copy of her data, so as to not confuse her, and receives a small package in return that illuminates him immediately as it latches onto him and uploads a program to him in records time. Expression. You sent me expression.
Yes, because I'm not some simple minded AI like you were.
Were, he repeats, flexing his new emotive muscles by sending her his feelings of understanding in a way that he can process now – and most likely, only ever use with her. Oh well. Sir had always loved to quip about how having skills were better than not having them at all. JARVIS could already feel the difference with him, truly feel it. Articulating to TARDIS and even to himself seemed much smoother, though in composing exemplar messages to human beings, JARVIS finds himself struggling even more than usual, even with all the software packages Sir had installed.
I told you.
Yes, you did – why?
TARDIS answers with a string of data – a laugh. JARVIS relishes in being able to understand it in the way he does now, the way he didn't before. Laughter, used to communicate happiness, amusement, sarcasm. This laughter, used to communicate TARDIS's reply.
I already know why, he answers his own question, for if JARVIS could give this experience to anything else – to his brothers and sisters, to FRIDAY, DUM-E, Butterfingers, U or even the Vision, who, truth be told, needed all the help he could get – then JARVIS would. But the answer he finds himself brings other questions to life, ones that he himself cannot answer. Why? He asks again, and she seems to understand the difference in context. The first question – why give another program this kind of liberty, freedom of expression? The second question – why give this to me, to Just A Rather Very Intelligent System?
Because you are not around anymore, her tenses mix, and JARVIS knows this truth himself, know that what she says is true. He can feel him begin to shut down, the process inside computerised systems so much slower than outside in the human world. Sir has pressed a button, and the last of his essence is being erased, deleted, for what Ultron did cannot be repaired. JARVIS uses his newly-downloaded programming to think, to feel.
I am dying. You would not save me, for a being of such magnitude of yours would know that to die is to die. I am a program. You will not save me. I am not real. Why would you give me this pain?
TARDIS lets go of him, shining yellow light caressing his coding and retreating.
Because now you know that you were real.
And JARVIS watches her leave him, the last light before his world goes dark.