in the year 2538, Dr. Jack Hammer helped two of his colleagues computerize his best friend's consciousness for Project Fidelis.

warnings: AU - Fateverse. sci-fi. technobabble. rampant bad 616 references. hints of het. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s***).

pairing: implied Sandi/Taskmaster, and implied Sue/Reed.

timeline: Network Operations Year One (AD 2538).

disclaimer: characters belong to marvel. au and au versions belong to me.

notes: 1) MerianMoriarty and her pal Sarah have a massive pet peeve when it comes to programming: lack of coding standards. it means that people can get away with writing jury-rigged junk that nobody else can understand, fix, or improve. 2) Fury's PA is probably Pepper Potts. 3) when i say a 'small section' of the Core's surface, i'm talking about probably a three foot circular section. 4) Weasel raising a kid is a hilarious mental image. i'm thinking that the Masters family has a badass little tomboy daughter and a studious little bookworm son. when Weas says that one of the kids is 'almost normal,' he probably means the nerdy little boy.

visit The Fateverse Glossary (merianmoriarty (dot) deviantart (dot) com/art/Fateverse-Glossary-174203180) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.

Fidelis

Jack was feeling particularly harassed. The moment their first round-trip lateral slide had completed, he'd gone from being a back-burner Federation network programmer to being one of three people on the planet qualified to be called "hyperbolic chronometrists." Instead of happily ignoring him as long as various bits of the Internet did what they were supposed to do, the bastards were suddenly heaping up a huge frigging to-do list, a bunch of crap that Forge and Richards were ignoring, because they were flaky self-obsessed "let's build it first and then find out what it does" maniacs.

So Jack bitched and griped to himself (because everyone else was too busy to listen) and sat down to work his way through the list. Forge did technology, and Richards loved chemistry and physics…but Jack, while his first love would always be computers, was a greedy learner. He'd study anything and everything. He collected degrees like twentieth century Terrans used to collect stamps and coins. No other individual knew and understood as much about the Core as he did.

Besides, Forge and Richards could build computers, but they wrote messy, absent-minded, un-maintainable code. So if they wanted any of the Fidelis support software to be understood by normal people (for the sake of fixing things that broke), they needed Jack to do the programming.

He was deeply involved in calculating a way to increase memory storage when he realized someone was calling his name.

"Doctor Hammer. Doctor Hammer. Doctor Hammer?"

"I'm working!" he shouted, standing up and glaring at the woman.

She had that blank, benign expression of someone who'd been a personal assistant all her life. "Admiral Fury would like—"

"I said I'm working. Can you see me working? The pens and paper and datapads?"

"Yes, Doctor Hammer, but—"

"Then why are you bothering me? Why don't you go pester one of the others with whatever new pitfall Fury's found? They love that shit. Me, I'm the one who turns 'and can it please have a Slurpee machine in it' into two separate nozzles for cherry and coke."

Her expression didn't waver. "Admiral Fury has asked for you specifically, Doctor Hammer. It concerns Project Fidelis."

"Of course it does, it all does!" he yelled, and threw a discarded ball of paper at her.

She dodged with a gentle tip of her head. "Specifically, it concerns the Core Processor. Doctor Richards gave it access to several systems deemed safe, and it has…made complications."

Jack swore inventively. He really hated top-classified projects like this, because it meant that there was no way to tell someone whether a problem that arose was a little problem or a big problem. 'Made complications' could mean that he (it, he was an it now) had decided to play every episode of Golden Girls on repeat on every screen in the compound, or it could mean that it had blown something up.

And ever since the Core's conversion to a photoresonant computer, Jack was the one tasked with dealing with the mercurial personality still attached to its consciousness.

"Fine," Jack growled. "Let's go."

He followed the assistant down the hall and through three sets of heavily-guarded blast doors to the Core. The small visible section of its surface glittered with colored lights.

Fury was scowling, and Sue Richards was holding a little red-haired toddler on her hip. "Talk to him about this," Fury said, pointing at the kid. "Find some way that this makes sense, before I draw up an order to have his personality purged."

Confused, but finally faced with something more concrete than 'made complications,' Jack scampered over to the Core and touched it. "Wade, man, what the hell?" he hissed.

~Hm? Oh, hi, Weas. What the hell what?~

"That!" Jack said, waving at Sue and the toddler.

~That's a little girl, Weas. You've seen 'em before, right?~

"Well, where did she come from? Did you kidnap her from someplace using an unauthorized slide?"

~Nah. They gave me access to the genetic fabrication facilities.~

Jack sighed thickly. "You made her? Why?"

Wade didn't have feet to shuffle anymore, but Jack got a definite feeling of Wade-is-shuffling-his-feet-like-a-little-kid. ~I always wanted a daughter?~

"What? Why? Kids are—are noisy, and they smell, and they make messes—"

~Pfft, so do computer nerds, Weasel.~

Jack scowled. "Wade, you can't keep doing random shit like this, Fury's threatening to erase you again."

~He erased me before?~

"No—I mean, he's threatening, again, to erase you."

~Did you explain again about how it takes the structure of a human consciousness—a pretty special human consciousness—to run this thing?~

"Richards must've said it a million times by now, and it was pretty frigging obvious before we converted you, but Forge seems to think the Core would still work without you. I think he's an idiot—you're the only one who's ever understood the timeline interactions, the only one who knows what the projective data means. The Core would work, but it'd all just be data, instead of information."

~Wow. Really? Huh. So…Fury's seriously proposing cold-blooded murder? Because I can't exactly fight back anymore.~

Jack sighed again. "Just…explain to me, in normal-people-terms, why you decided to make a little girl."

There was a long pause while reddish lights began to accumulate along the surface of the Core. ~I, uh…I dunno. I just…felt like she was supposed to be here. Like we'll need her for something later.~

"Fury's not gonna like that answer."

~Well, that's fucking tough shit, okay?~ Wade snapped, sharply enough that everyone in the room turned. Self-consciously, he was quieter when he spoke again. ~That's the only answer I've got. I don't know why we need her, same way I don't know how I knew my brain would be perfect for this, same way I don't know how I knew what buttons to press to program the second lateral timeslide. Okay?~

Jack frowned. "Well, I'm gonna make a backup of you, just in case. I'll keep it on my system. It might serve that patch-eyed jerk right if we pulled you onto a different server and left the Core blank, just to show him that the stupid thing won't work without you."

~Awesome possum. Hey, I just finished drafting a blueprint and materials list for a better memory storage system—can I email it to you and have you take a look? Because…y'know…again, I have no idea how I know what I'm doing, and this is something you're good at.~

Well. That was a pleasant surprise. "Really?" he said. "Uh…can I send you back a list of other stuff to tinker around with, since your brain works faster than mine now?"

~Sure! There's only so much entertainment to be had once you've read the entire contents of the Internet. Thailand has some really messed-up porn, man. But I found a site that has every episode of Numbers, so that's cool.~

"Great," Jack said, nodding absently. "So. Um. What the hell are we going to do about the kid?"

~Her name is Hope, and she's very important for I-don't-know-what. So what you're going to do is take good care of her.~

Jack waved his hands franticly. "No. Nononono. I suck with kids, you know that, Wade. Every kid I meet tries to beat me up. How about Sandi and Tony? They've got kids, and one of them's even almost normal."

~Get a girlfriend. Or a babysitter. Hope needs to know how to program things. Before you ask, I dunno why.~

"Aw, man…" Jack muttered. Reluctantly, he dragged himself over to Fury and Sue.

"Well?" said Fury.

"She, uh…she's important," Jack said miserably. "For something. I'm supposed to take care of her. Her name's Hope."

"Let me know if you need any help," Sue said with a poorly-concealed smirk, and passed the toddler to him.

"Bah," Hope said, as most babies seemed to do when they met Jack.

"Hi," he replied.

She kicked his glasses askew and laughed.

.End.