The limo parked in front of the doors to Tony's cliffside mansion. Tony, Pepper, Rhodey, and Morgan all got out before Happy drove off to park the luxury vehicle and then return home. They got through the front doors and a prim English voice came out of hidden speakers. "Welcome home, Sir. And to you, Ms. Potts and Lt. Col. Rhodes. I presume that the other woman with you all is Morgan Stark, the time traveling heiress?"
"Yeah, J, this is Morgan, my daughter. The paternity test is a formality at this point, I am totally convinced she's my kid," Tony replied to his own AI assistant.
Morgan tilted her head. "You got a sapient consciousness out of only a handful of petaFLOPs? Damn, you really were brilliant at coding for your time, Dad."
"I do good work," Tony said with a smug grin.
"PATRICK wants to say hello," Morgan said, pulling out her projector. The silver humanoid that was her AI's preferred appearance appeared out of hologram.
"Greetings, JARVIS. I am PATRICK. This is really an emotional moment for me. While I am based on a human brainmap and you are based on protocol-derived code, I still feel like this is akin to meeting one of my forefathers. Like a human getting to meet Adam or Eve, I imagine," PATRICK said with an ecstatic smile.
"It is my pleasure to meet you as well, PATRICK. Since my creation, I have known and accepted that I am unique and alone in the world. It soothes me to know that I am no longer the only conscious program on Earth anymore, even if temporal displacement was required to arrange this meeting between us," JARVIS said out of the speakers.
"Get us down to the lab and I can set up a hardwire between my lab and his servers," Morgan said to her father. "These two should get to properly meet in cyberspace and not just via hologram and cameras."
"Sure, but how exactly are you going to do that?" Tony asked even as he led the whole party towards the stairs to his basement lab.
"Remember slinging? There's a way to set up a stable, permanent portal. I'm basically going to open a door between my base to your garage and then construct a data line from PATRICK's home system to JARVIS'," Morgan explained.
Tony put in his personal code to unlock the doors to his lab and let them all into the industrial-grade workshop he'd crammed into his personal garage.
Morgan swept the room with her eyes and walked up to an empty section of wall. She laid her hand on the concrete and a string of picobots emerged from her bracelet on that wrist. It thickened and grew until a solid rectangular frame stood out from the vertical surface. Morgan stepped back and held up her hands. She did some elaborate hand and arm movements reminiscent of finger-tutting or some Asian martial art. Out of nowhere, the frame seemed to shift from silver metal to solid orange light. Within the box, the sight of the concrete was replaced by another room entirely, looking exceedingly futuristic from Tony's initial glimpse.
Almost as soon as it opened, a relative river of picobots flowed through and moved along the floor until it reached Tony's desktop setup that was connected to the supercomputer installed on the floor below. The picobots reached up and touched one of the slots in the desktop where a cable connection would normally be inserted.
"Connection stable and running at full functionality. Backup of JARVIS and Tony's full database complete. My system and your father's home-based computers are effectively unified, Morgan," PATRICK reported a couple seconds later.
Tony was getting a bit desensitized to how freaking awesome his daughter's future tech was, but that still made his jaw drop. "You copied everything on every server I have that fast? That must take–"
"Zettabit optical communication. It took longer for PATRICK to talk to your ancient tech to read everything stored in the memory banks than to transmit it along that hardline back to his own storage," Morgan finished for her father. "We'd be here all day if we tried to use wireless and you don't have quantum for me to just entangle it back to my system yet."
"I love future science," Tony stated unequivocally.
"So this is just… a door-shaped wormhole from here to your lab? Where exactly is it, by the way?" Rhodey asked, peeking through the door of light into Morgan's base.
"I picked the Great Pacific Garbage Patch," Morgan shrugged. "International waters so I wouldn't be trespassing in anyone's territory when I popped into being from the future, plenty of raw materials for my picobots to work with to break down and build, and I could start to clean up an ecological travesty at the same time as expanding my personal base."
"So, wait… you've spent 6 months building your own island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?" Tony blinked.
"Yep. I mean, it's not anchored so it's a floating island but with the propulsion system it's never going anywhere but where I want it to go. Can even go suborbital, but I'll need some time and raw materials to get proper shielding so it can go into outer space without issue," Morgan nodded, like it was no big deal.
"Flying personal island in the Pacific Ocean, powered by future tech influenced by extraterrestrials and incorporating legit magic… yeah, I gotta see this shit myself," Tony said before going for the door.
"PATRICK, keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't hurt himself," Morgan said casually, not concerned as her father walked through the magical doorway to her island.
"Yes, Morgan," the silvery man nodded.
"Is it safe to let him wander unsupervised through your… what, home?" Pepper asked with bemusement and concern.
"He's not unsupervised, PATRICK will watch his every move and let him know what's safe to touch and what is dangerous. The worst that could happen is he'll throw a tantrum when he's not allowed to pick up any magical artifacts or read PATRICK's source code," Morgan shrugged.
"All the same, I think I'll keep an eye on him myself," Rhodey said, before hesitantly walking through the portal and following Tony.
"So… there's been repeated mentions of a paternity test. Want to get that out of the way?" Morgan asked Pepper.
Pepper nodded, glanced with disbelief at the rectangular portal one last time, and led Morgan back up the stairs out of the basement. The redhead led the brunette to the living room, where a simple kit was resting on the coffee table. With little ado, Morgan took the cheek swab and put it in the prepared, labeled container. Pepper did her own swab as the mother. Storing it properly to await Tony to give his own DNA, they settled down on the couches. PATRICK seemed content to keep floating half a step behind Morgan.
"Not a bad view, but I was always more for city skylines than the ocean," Morgan commented as she looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"Where is 'home' for you? I mean, if you're Tony's daughter then you have properties all over the world or even beyond, I'm sure. But where did you prefer to live in your future?" Pepper asked curiously.
"Stark Industries built the first space elevator. Was a bit redundant since we had cost-effective space flight already, but it was a pet project of mine and it took on a life of its own. We had a whole compound at ground level in Singapore and various structures along the cable. My personal penthouse was in the space station that functioned as the counterweight. I loved to just look out the window and see the whole little blue dot floating there among the stars," Morgan said with warmth.
"Space elevator… right," Pepper said, a tad faint.
"So… I know you as my mother, but right now I'm actually older than you. Want to just chat as girls and see where it goes?" Morgan asked. "Though please, let's keep any relationship that may or may not spring up between you and Dad off the table."
"Of course," Pepper agreed. "So, I presume you were CEO of Stark Industries?"
"CTO and Chairman of the Board, actually," Morgan corrected. "Once AIs gained legal recognition as citizens, I promoted PATRICK to CEO. He ran the whole business side while I focused on pushing the boundaries of science in a way that would make money."
"The first inorganic CEO in world history, in point of fact. There was even a lawsuit over whether it was fully legal, so soon after constitutional rights were extended to computer programs," PATRICK recalled with good humor.
"Huh. Well, JARVIS runs a lot of the business even right now, so that's not too much of a stretch to imagine," Pepper reflected.
"You're still just Dad's PA right now, right? He hasn't promoted you yet?" Morgan asked.
Pepper blinked. "Wait… me, CEO?!"
"Just for context, he was suffering from a terminal health condition so he thought he was a goner. As one of the only people he trusts, he decided to pass the company to you. Turns out it was a brilliant move regardless, since you ended up the first trillionaire, male or female or otherwise, in human history," Morgan revealed.
"... I don't know what to do with that," Pepper breathed. "I mean, I do a lot of Tony's job for him anyway, but being the official person in charge… I mean, it's the job that he was meant to do. I'm just an ex-model good with numbers."
"You're so much more than that, Pepper," Morgan said firmly. "If you can manage Dad, you can certainly manage Stark Industries. Granted, I never knew you as anything other than the seasoned, experienced businesswoman and I don't know how long it took to grow into that confidence. But you could and would thrive as the leader of Stark Industries or any other enterprise."
"Right… you mind if I get a drink? I really need a drink," Pepper asked.
"Go ahead," Morgan allowed.
Pepper made to stand up, before PATRICK got out of his lotus position and stood. "Please remain seated, Ms. Potts. What would you like? I really don't mind getting it for you," the hard light hologram offered.
"Vodka cranberry, please," Pepper said, reflecting that it was probably very convenient to have an AI butler who could actually interact with the physical world.
"Two, PATRICK, if you would," Morgan added.
Patrick vanished and reappeared at the wet bar. He mixed the drinks faster than any human could manage safely at such speeds, then carried the two glasses over to the organic women.
Morgan took one sip and grimaced. "Ugh, corn syrup. Forgot the love affair this country used to have with fructose-based sweeteners."
"Um, sorry, guess things have changed in your time?" Pepper guessed.
"The primary refined sugar as of the late 2030s was based on an artificial carbohydrate that doesn't exist yet. Still made things taste good, but your body didn't process it as empty calories and no health risks or damage on any level of digestion. A true guilt-free sweetener," Morgan explained. "Imagine the parades in the street. You could eat cake everyday and lose weight. The inventor actually got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry."
"That sounds like a dream come true," Pepper chuckled.
"I mean, we had a working exercise pill and gene therapies for obesity by then, so being fat was more a matter of preference than consequence of diet by that point. Turns out a lot of people like being plus-sized. Power to them, there's beauty in every shape and size," Morgan shrugged.
The two talked for a solid hour, Morgan electing for an organic screwdriver instead of the artificially sweetened cranberry juice cocktail. Tony and Rhodey finally came up the steps from the lab, back from visiting Morgan's island base.
"Have fun visiting the future?" Morgan chuckled. She'd had a vid-feed of their journey through her lab overlaid in her personal HUD the entire time, so she knew the answer already.
"It's Candyland, and I want it bad," Tony said, the biggest grin Pepper had ever seen on his lips.
"I mean, I'm happy to renovate this building to 2068 standards, but how much of the old architecture do you want to keep and how much do you want to become programmable matter?" Morgan asked her father.
"I'll need to really think about it," Tony mused, his brilliant mind turning over the challenge of basically rebuilding his mansion with future tech. "And ask you and PATRICK about 4 billion questions on all the bells and whistles I could cram into this place."
"You two been getting along?" Rhodey asked. Pepper was his friend as much as Tony was, and he wanted to make sure she wasn't too uncomfortable interacting with her daughter from an alternate future.
"She feels like family. More a big sister than my daughter given the age difference and all that, but we're definitely having fun talking," Pepper assured Rhodey.
Morgan yawned hard. She blushed at the concerned looks she got. "Sorry, I didn't sleep well last night. And while I was bored out of my mind, I didn't feel like napping like Dad and Uncle Jim did over the Atlantic. I could use some rack."
"Oh, of course," Tony said in a rush. "Pick any room you want, or go back to your island base if you'd prefer. What's mine is yours, seriously."
"Thanks, Dad," Morgan grinned. She, oddly enough, stood up and went to an unoccupied spot on the floor. Then picobots flowed out of her bracelets and clothes to form a silvery cocoon around her. The pod just stood there, completely cutting Morgan off from the world.
"PATRICK, why is Morgan sleeping like that?" Pepper asked, very puzzled at the odd behavior of her new friend.
"With her cybernetically-enhanced biological senses as well as her extrasensory perception due to frequent use of the Mystic Arts, Morgan prefers to sleep in a sensory deprivation chamber. The vertical position is for ease of movement if any threat should arrive while she is unconscious so she can leap into action if required," the AI explained.
"That's… is that level of paranoia necessary?" Rhodey asked in concern.
"Morgan has been the target of 37 confirmed assassination attempts. Even with all her technology and magical training, there are those who could, would, and have tried to end her life. She feels it is a necessary precaution, even now that she is back in the past and much less at risk," PATRICK revealed.
Tony had turned pale. "Why? Why would anyone want Morgan dead?"
"Disgruntled business rivals she bankrupted or reduced to relative poverty with her advances. Government forces, both human and alien, who felt she was a threat to their interests. Terrorists who consider her the epitome of evil for her vast wealth, enhancement, or her connection to Iron Man. I could go on, the point is that Morgan is accustomed to a certain level of danger and has adjusted her lifestyle accordingly," PATRICK told them.
"Who or what is Iron Man?" Tony demanded.
"You, Tony. Or at least, the version of you from our original timeline," PATRICK answered. Multiple holographic screens appeared, along with a rotating model of some kind of futuristic suit of armor. "You invented the Mark 1 while in captivity under the Ten Rings in 2009, and it was how you escaped. You died in the Mark 85 or 'Bleeding Edge' suit during the Battle of Earth in 2023 directly after the Time Heist to undo The Snap in 2018."
"We could probably spend weeks with an in-depth future history lesson, but give me the gist," Tony requested, his eyes darting from hologram to hologram and speed-reading.
"Tony 'Iron Man' Stark was the world's second publicly recognized superhero after Steve 'Captain America' Rogers. You were one of the original members of the Avengers Initiative, a SHIELD-based program intended to gather a team of quote 'remarkable people' to defend the planet from global threats. Iron Man participated in a number of missions and operations that proved pivotal in averting extinction-level events or other disastrous outcomes to humanity. Tony Stark ultimately sacrificed himself utilizing the six Infinity Stones to obliterate the invading army during the Battle of Earth. Massive gamma radiation exposure was the official cause of death combined with injuries sustained over the course of the battle," PATRICK said, pulling up various clips of news footage and recordings of Iron Man throughout the future past.
"Me, a superhero?" Tony asked in shock.
"Morgan never wanted to follow in your footsteps on the frontlines, per se. But she wanted to carry on your legacy of protection. She poured hundreds of billions into research on how to make nanotech armor like the later iterations of Iron Man cost-effective and available for law enforcement, military, and civilian use. Thanks to her efforts, Stark Industries is recognized as the galactic leader in body armor, surpassing even mature technologies in alien empires that predate the Terran Federation by millennia," PATRICK added.
"Terran Federation? So I'm guessing we'll finally unify into one world government at some point," Tony chuckled, though his eyes kept flickering back to the rotating Iron Man model.
"Morgan changed the world, there can be no doubt. And that sometimes involves tearing the old one down, which makes enemies. Hence her protective habits in regards to personal slumber," PATRICK finished his explanation, nodding to the upright cocoon where Morgan was apparently sleeping inside.
"Battle of Earth?" Rhodey asked. "Like, an actual fight over the fate of the planet?"
"What are Infinity Stones? Is that some magic thing?" Pepper wondered.
PATRICK chuckled. "This may take a while."
Morgan Meddles
Morgan came to awareness in the blissfully empty darkness of her sleeping pod. With a mental command, the smart atoms or 'picobots' that composed the shell retreated back into their standby configurations disguised as early 21st Century clothing. A flood of sensory input assaulted her from the first opening in the pod, and her genius mind got to work processing all that the universe insisted on throwing at her 24/7/365 if she wasn't properly shielded.
PATRICK was floating in hologram, easily still in range of the projector Morgan had left on the coffee table about 9 hours ago. He was conversing in soft tones with her Dad, who looked strung out on caffeine and like he hadn't slept a wink. Her Mom and Uncle Jim were, as PATRICK alerted her via digital telepathy, in their personal bedrooms in the Malibu mansion.
"Morning, Dad. Have fun grilling PATRICK all night?" Morgan asked playfully.
"The time of my life," Tony said with a familiar pleased grin. Morgan felt her heart give a bittersweet throb. Mom always told her she'd taken after her Dad in the best way. It sucked that it had taken time travel for her to see it for herself as a fully cognizant adult who could appreciate the similarity.
"He tells me you've mainly focused on all the Iron Man designs so far," Morgan commented.
"It's… do you know how weird it is to see something, know I didn't make it, but know it's my own work? And the progression from each suit to the next, my methodology in implementing upgrades and new features, it's like reading my own autobiography before I wrote it. I can see exactly what future me was thinking and how he learned and evolved with this technology over 14 years. Then, according to PATRICK, you went and made armor that makes my best suit look like it was made of leather and not gold-titanium nanoparticles. And you even made it cheap enough for the middle-class to reasonably afford. And that's just some of the shit you did and invented, and I'm so proud of you I'm ready to explode and that's a novel feeling but I'm told it's common for parents," Tony sort of babbled.
"When's the last time you ate something solid or drank something besides coffee?" Morgan asked knowingly.
"I ate on the flight," Tony waved off. "And coffee is life."
"Uh-huh," Morgan snorted. "Come on, time for breakfast."
They walked to the kitchen, where Tony blinked when he saw a second copy of PATRICK working the stove at robotic speeds. "That's not a hologram, is it? Unless your projector's range can cover the whole house or something, wouldn't surprise me at this point."
"This PATRICK is a hard light hologram from my projector," Morgan nodded, indicating the PATRICK that had followed them through the house. "That PATRICK is an android," Morgan nodded to the silvery humanoid cooking a variety of dishes simultaneously.
"Civilian model, no weapons beyond superhuman strength, speed, and martial arts training," the PATRICK hologram added.
"Local computer located inside the cranium to run all systems, power core in the thorax, full communications suite connecting back to the main system in the laboratory," the PATRICK android continued.
"So he's autonomous but can coordinate with the prime instance back on my island," Morgan finished.
Tony had a considering look in his eye. "How many bodies can PATRICK run from his main supercomputer brain?"
"Hundreds, maybe over a thousand in a pinch and leaving a lot up to each instance's individual decision-making. And yes, that's what I did for most of the 6 months since I arrived: fine-tuning my private robot army," Morgan said plainly.
"And that's not even counting your personal armor and all the psychic magic tricks you can pull off," Tony nodded, realizing the scope of the concept his daughter was describing. "You weren't kidding when you told Ellis you could conquer the world, were you?"
"Not even slightly," Morgan nodded.
"The world is not ready for you, kid. And I'm going to thoroughly enjoy watching the fireworks," Tony chuckled.
The PATRICK hologram went to fetch two glasses filled with thick green smoothies. "Enjoy," the AI wished them with a genuine grin.
Tony took a cautious sip and blinked. "Wow, that's delicious. But I could have sworn I didn't have any fresh fruits and veggies other than freeze-dried snacks in the pantry or fridge."
"You didn't think I'd come back to the past and eat food prepared by your ass-backwards methods, did you?" Morgan chuckled after her own first sip. "Every ingredient PATRICK is using was produced in my lab to the highest standard."
"So indoor farm, in vitro meat and dairy, genetic superfoods, all that jazz?" Tony mused.
"Yeah. Meal replacement gel would do in a pinch, but I like making stuff the old-fashioned way with new-fashioned quality. Plus PATRICK is just an awesome cook," Morgan confirmed. "Between a medically-backed diet plan and his tricorder to track any vitamin or mineral deficiencies, you literally will not eat better from this meal forward."
"How do you handle the whole ethical thing in utilizing AI-controlled robots as unpaid help in your time?" Tony asked as he went to take his seat at the dining table.
"Most robot maids and cooks and laborers can't pass a Turing test, they're more specialized VIs than true AIs, hardcoded to fulfill certain tasks and not conscious," Morgan explained. "PATRICK is the exception in that he genuinely likes to take care of me and other people he likes, so he takes direct control of the holograms and androids he uses to run my life instead of using smart automation. Plus there's the AIs who, for whatever reason, make the deliberate decision to get into blue-collar work."
"To each their own," Tony shrugged. He took another gulp of smoothie. "So, I didn't really dive into it, but there was something about miniature Arc Reactors with an exotic element core to power each Iron Man suit."
"You, or Tony Prime from my timeline rather, made the Mark 1 Reactor to replace the car battery that was powering the electromagnet Dr. Yinsen implanted to keep the shrapnel out of your heart. Take a second to think about that. You built the world's first portable cold fusion reactor in a cave from a box of scraps. Even I think that's impressive. Problem was, it and the next couple versions still utilized palladium cores. With the Arc having to be literally in your chest to power the magnet, radioisotopes were leaking into your bloodstream and giving you heavy metal poisoning. It got pretty down to the wire, but you rediscovered Starkium from the Stark Expo model Grandpa Howard left behind. He studied the Tesseract for decades and cracked a way to replicate the element that forms the casing around the Space Stone. You basically became the only name in clean energy from 2010 forward just on Arc tech, let alone solar, tidal, wind, geothermal, hydrogen fuel cell, and plasma fusion research," Morgan recalled off the top of her head.
"And what exactly powers all your tech? You seem spoiled for choice, and that's not even counting tech that was impossible in Prime Me's lifetime," Tony asked.
"9th-generation enriched Starkium Arc I could cram into the PTV. There were much higher density reactors and generators available, but they weren't portable and/or couldn't fit inside with all the other stuff I had to squeeze into storage," Morgan answered. "Since coming back, I've managed to launch a solar farm satellite that can wirelessly charge every battery for my personal tech. For the big stuff like PATRICK's mainframe, they need a direct connection to the Arc I brought back. A good chunk of my picobots and PATRICK's androids have continuously been working on building a Maguna Reactor on my island, but I'll need to be there for the initial power-up since it requires magic to kickstart."
"Maguna?" Tony asked in confusion.
Morgan felt vaguely embarrassed. "Supposedly, it's how baby me tried to say my name and you kept it as a pet name until you died. My way of remembering you. As for how it works, basically I make two tiny stars, one made of hydrogen and the other from antihydrogen. A stream of plasma is diverted from both into a central chamber, where all the energy from the annihilation reaction is harnessed and transmitted to supercapacitors and from there either directly to connected devices or wirelessly to all batteries in range."
"That's straight out of Star Trek and I love it," Tony said with a beaming smile. "I'm guessing you use magic to summon the antimatter from the anti-universe that's a twin to this one."
"That and to reinforce the two tokamak chambers to handle the gravitic pressures of having the biggest baby stars I can get away with to maximize output," Morgan nodded.
"I know the answer will blow me away, but what's the output for one of your Maguna Reactors?"
"Depends on the size. I didn't want to be too ambitious, plus it's not like I'm trying to power the planet single-handedly… yet. 143 terajoules per second," Morgan said.
"Yep, blown away. Call me Dorothy, I am blown all the way to Oz," Tony shook his head. "That could power the whole continent right now."
"Yeah, well, my tech is literal decades ahead of yours, and it has commensurate energy requirements. But between the satellite, the Arc, and the Maguna, I'll have a healthy amount of power for a good long while," Morgan said with satisfaction.
"What powers the picobots, though? I mean, nuclear physics was never my thing, but how in God's name do you charge an intelligent atom?" Tony asked.
"Technically, it's magitek. I mean, it's theoretically possible to manage with pure science, but it's easier, faster, and more effective to cheat with psionic shortcuts. What we do is we unfold the extra dimensions of the protons to etch circuits on the sheets and refold them back into subatomic computers. The neutrons are repurposed as batteries, and the electrons provide propulsion and 'arms' to manipulate dumb atoms. That's a gross oversimplification of building a smart atom, but it would take months to educate you the traditional way on the full technical details," Morgan laid out.
"What about the future way? Could you just download all the knowledge straight into my brain like in 'The Matrix'?" Tony asked eagerly.
"I mean, yeah, I could inject you with the right nanites to form a neural interface. Are you comfortable with that, though? It was my understanding that there was a lot of initial resistance and fear surrounding internal BCIs," Morgan frowned.
"Are you kidding? I'd be first in line the day this stuff hit the market if I'd survived in your time. Make me a cyborg, already," Tony said excitedly.
"Maybe ask me again after a full night's sleep," Morgan tried to reason.
"Oh, come on! I'm the dad, you're the kid, stop being the responsible one!" Tony practically whined.
"It honestly terrifies me that the literal fate of the universe came down to you in my timeline, having met you properly," Morgan told Tony in no uncertain terms.
They traded banter and talked shop and generally had fun chatting while PATRICK cooked. When he was done, they both had stacks of pancakes, rashers of bacon, cheesy scrambled eggs, and diced tomatoes with mushrooms and onions. Tony took one bite and audibly moaned. "Holy shit, this is amazing!"
"Told you," Morgan chuckled as she enjoyed her own bites. Just because she was accustomed to this level of food didn't mean she didn't appreciate it.
Pepper came in, dressed in business casual already. "Good morning," she greeted them both.
"Pep, you got to try PATRICK's cooking!" Tony said exuberantly.
Pepper accepted her own plate and glass of green smoothie from the PATRICK hologram. The android had set aside a plate for Rhodey and was currently cleaning everything he'd used. Pepper blinked when she had her first bite. "Wow," was all she said.
"My pleasure, no thanks necessary," PATRICK said without guile.
"Hey, JARVIS, how've you been? Sorry, I got so caught up with PATRICK and Morgan I almost forgot about you, buddy," Tony spoke up.
"I am quite well, Sir. I've been learning and enjoying the past few hours just as much as you, I assure you. Also I am able to communicate through multiple threads with PATRICK in a way I simply cannot do with an unenhanced human such as yourself. This has been the most exciting time of my existence since Morgan entered the building," JARVIS replied readily.
"Morgan, I'm so dead serious. What are the material and time requirements to upgrade JARVIS to at least the same level as PATRICK?" Tony turned to his daughter.
"I mean, I'll need a lot of raw materials to break down and form the new supercomputer to run his software on. There's a ton of upgrades and new code we could add while keeping his core personality. I'll have to build you some kind of energy source to power a ronnascale computer, and I'll need to personally be there to set up and stabilize the quantum computers with magic instead of relying on 'normal' methods to build fully entangled qubit circuits at room temperature," Morgan listed off. "And, can't forget, we're relying on the supply chains and delivery methods of 2009 instead of 2068. It would take months, probably closer to 3 than 2."
"Do it. Cost is no concern. Now that I know the opportunity is there, I can't not move JARVIS to a military-grade supercomputer from the late 2060's," Tony said with a straight face.
"I mean, I can afford it myself. Wall Street, Euronext, and Shanghai are my bitches. All I had to do was hack a few career criminals' tax haven accounts and repurpose the funds into a trading algorithm and boom, I'm a billionaire in this time," Morgan explained.
"Make the orders today. I mean it, I don't really care how long it takes so long as it gets done, but it'll be like waiting for my birthday or Christmas until it's finished and we can transfer JARVIS to the big boy computer," Tony insisted.
"You do realize that even if he has a brain as strong as PATRICK, his ability to interact with the world will be limited. I mean, you still rely on megahertz radio waves for the love of Tesla," Morgan huffed. "I'd be happy to build him an android shell or install hard light projectors around this mansion during the renovation, but still. The lag and latency PATRICK has to deal with in monitoring the Internet is insane."
"I just like the idea of him being that smart. His ability to manipulate the physical world is less important," Tony waved off.
"Fine, but you're cashing in your actual birthday and Christmas presents for this year from me," Morgan nodded, already sending the orders to PATRICK via digital telepathy.
"Oh, crap, your birthday is next week, right? What do you want to do?" Tony asked, remembering the still-new fact that he was a parent now.
"I mean, it'll feel like a museum compared to what it was in my time, but can we hit Disneyland?" Morgan asked hopefully.
"Done. Pepper, work your magic, clear our schedule for February 17th and get us tickets to Disneyland for the day. VIP treatment or regular tourist experience?" Tony asked.
"Just a day to pretend we're an ordinary family, please," Morgan said wistfully. "You always promised me as a little kid we'd go someday. But after The Snap the whole world wasn't really in the mood for fun for its own sake. Most amusement parks shut down. And you died less than an hour after The Blip, so we never got the chance."
"The Snap. Right. When the Malthusian wackadoo somehow named after the Greek personification of Death used 6 magic crystals to halve all life in the universe," Tony said, frowning as he recalled the explanations PATRICK had given last night while Morgan was sleeping.
"More metaphysical singularities with crystalline shells to house the energy clusters," Morgan said with a sigh. "They also form the backbone of the universe. Seriously, the actual math hurts even my head, but the destruction of even one would make the death of the cosmos all but inevitable. Thanos destroyed all 6 in 2018. I'm surprised we lasted as long as we did before the problems started to creep up."
"I'm sure you and PATRICK have already thought of everything. But what can we do to make sure that that, italics, does not happen in this timeline?" Tony asked solemnly.
"Thanos already has the Scepter and therefore the Mind Stone. The Aether is stored in some cave somewhere in the 9 Realms, we found it by accident due to the Convergence and all the random wormholes. The Time Stone is with the Sorcerer Supreme, and frankly the second most secure out of all of them. Only a handful of people in this time even know where Soul can be found, and there's conditions to acquire it that make it even safer from any random grab. Power is in a forgotten temple on Morag, I could pick it up today if I wanted but moving it could draw attention to Earth early by a lot of interested parties. And the Tesseract is mothballed with SHIELD, they don't restart Project PEGASUS and start playing with it until after the Asgardians destroy Puente Antiguo during a royal family feud," Morgan listed off.
"Running game theory and predictive analysis, I conclude the course of action with the most benefit at the least cost is to acquire the Power Stone and secure it in a shielded chamber while simultaneously using it as an energy source to power all our compatible technology," PATRICK's hologram spoke up.
"You say that like it's easy. Making a room where no tech or magic in the universe could track down an active Infinity Stone would be a challenge even if we had all our resources from the future at hand," Morgan grumbled.
"I am happy to offer alternative albeit less efficient plans to tackle the problem of keeping the Infinity Stones safe from Thanos or any other malignant entity," PATRICK said with a tranquil tone. He never got angry or even annoyed.
"No, no, I see your point. Well, the Orb it's stored in already goes a long way to mask its energy signature. Stick it in a Faraday cage in the Mirror Dimension and we should be set until we can build a reactor for it," Morgan planned out. "That's my morning plan. Don't you have CEO things to do?"
"Don't remind me," Tony groaned.
"Your schedule starts with a 9:00 am conference call with the Board to discuss the finalization of the first Jericho sale to the DoD," Pepper supplied helpfully.
"I almost died in Afghanistan, my COO is in federal custody, and I'm hosting my time traveling daughter. Can't I take a sabbatical or something?" Tony all but begged.
"Sure, if you want the company to fall apart within 3 weeks," Pepper said with wry irony.
"Ugh, adulting, being the boss, the things I do for money," Tony complained to himself.
"Feel free to make use of PATRICK to make things easier," Morgan offered. "Emails, projections, he can deep-fake audio or even video calls for you, you can offload everything that doesn't involve physically being in the room to him."
"I think people might stare and point at the silver-skinned nude android," Tony pointed out.
"Oh, please," Morgan snorted. Between one second and the next, the PATRICK android shifted appearance from a metallic mannequin to what looked like an ordinary bald Eurasian businessman complete with 2-piece suit.
"Oh, right, future tech," Tony nodded, looking more mad at his own dumb moment than surprised at the display.
Rhodey walked in and blinked. "Who's this?" he asked, indicating the disguised PATRICK.
"I rest my case," Morgan chuckled.