The valet at the Malibu Regency Hotel knew who Tony was, and took the keys to the Land Rover without saying a word about Tony's state of dress or Jarvis' state of undress. Tony knew the manager, as well – a friendly fellow called Velasquez, like the artist – which was why he was perfectly confident that he could walk in and get a room, no matter how he was dressed or how his companion wasn't.
"Here." He unbuttoned the shirt he'd put on over his grease-stained tee, and tossed it to Jarvis. "Tie it around your waist. No, the other way... oh, here," he decided, quickly running out of patience for watching Jarvis fumble with it. "I'll do it." He took it back and tied it in place, and then they headed inside.
Unfortunately, Mr. Velasquez was not in the lobby, and the clerk at the check-in desk was not as understanding as her boss would have been. By the time Tony reached her and began to ask for the manager, she'd already summoned security.
"I'm sorry, gentlemen," she said, in the frosty voice of a woman who was in fact doing the exact opposite of apologizing, "but I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"I need to speak to the manager," said Tony.
"Mr. Velasquez will be happy to discuss this with you when your friend has some clothes on," the woman – her nametag said 'Sarah' – replied. She raised a hand to call the nearest guard. "Ivan!"
"You don't recognize me, do you?" asked Tony. "It's the sunglasses, isn't it?" He took them off.
A shadow fell over him. He began to look up, but found himself being seized from behind by a security guard even the Hulk would have thought twice about.
"Hey!" Tony protested. "Here now, there's no need for... ow!" he exclaimed, as the guard twisted his right arm, wrenching his bad shoulder – a souvenir of his escape from Afghanistan. "Come on, it's me, Tony Stark! Iron Man! You've heard of me, I know you have!" The guard paid no attention, and began to march Tony towards the door while another, almost equally large, followed with Jarvis. "Where is the manager?" Tony demanded.
His timing was fortuitous: a split second later, the door behind the check-in desk banged open and Mr. Velasquez stormed out. "What the hell is going on out here?" he asked, surveying the scene. A small crowd had gathered as hotel patrons noticed the disturbance and came to see what was going on. "You two!" Velasquez pointed at the guards. "Let go of those men right now."
The two guards exchanged a confused glance, then released their prisoners. Tony shook out his arm – the shoulder hurt – then went to help Jarvis, who'd fallen down when the guard let go of him. "You all right?" he asked, dragging the other man, or approximation thereof, to his feet.
"Everything appears to be in working order, Sir," said Jarvis, sounding shaken.
"I am so sorry about that, Mr. Stark!" said Velasquez, coming to help Tony brush himself off. He did glance at Jarvis, but did not offer the same courtesy to him. Instead, he turned and shook a finger at the giant security guards. "Don't you know who these men are?" he demanded. "This is Tony Stark! He's got more lawyers than you have brain cells! Apologize to them at once."
"Sorry, Mr. Stark," the guards chorused.
Tony pursed his lips and cocked his head. "I don't think they mean it."
Velasquez gave the two guards a very pointed look.
"I'm very sorry, Mr. Stark," said the bigger one, the one the clerk had called Ivan.
"I didn't realize who you were," the other added. "It won't happen again."
"Much better," Tony said with a stiff nod.
Velasquez heaved a sigh of relief and turned to the desk clerk. "Sarah," he said, "put Mr. Stark and his friend in our best suite."
She nodded, clearly terrified, and began to enter it into the computer – then she stopped and pursed her lips. "Um, Sir?" she asked. "It's booked. We've got a guest arriving at four."
"Is it four yet?" asked Velasquez.
"No, Sir," said Sarah.
"Then put the other guy somewhere else, and if he asks why, tell him we needed to apologize to Mr. Stark for this oaf nearly breaking his arm!" Velasquez gestured to Ivan.
Sarah quickly made the changes. "Can I get your friend's name, Mr. Stark?" she asked.
"Jarvis," said Tony, without thinking, and then realized Sarah probably needed two names to put in the computer. The first given name he thought of was his own middle name: "Edward Jarvis."
"I'll have your keys for you momentarily!" Sarah promised. Her hands were shaking as she typed, and she kept having to backspace and correct her mistakes. "J... A... V... no, R..."
"Should I call a doctor to look at your arm, Mr. Stark?" the manager asked anxiously.
"Yes, please," said Tony firmly, although he wasn't really worried about it – the security guard hadn't done anything more serious than pull the scar in the wrong direction. Tony just wanted to make sure everybody was good and sorry. "And I'll need somebody to swing by my house and pick up a few things. And call the guys at Martelli and Sons tailors – tell them Tony Stark's friend needs a suit. Quickly."
"Of course, Mr. Stark," Velasquez said. "And may I say again how very sorry I am?"
That was when the police arrived.
Since Sarah the clerk was the one who'd rung the silent alarm, Velasquez left her to explain the situation while he showed Tony and Jarvis to the penthouse suite, continuing to apologize over and over on the way. Tony eventually had to explicitly promise that he did not plan on suing the hotel, and even then it took several more assurances to make the man shut up. Finally, Tony managed to convince him that everything was fine, that the suit was lovely, and that he wanted to be left alone now. Once they were rid of the man, Tony shoved Jarvis into the shower and called Pepper.
As he listened to the phone ring, it did occur to Tony that he was taking this remarkably well... but then, Tony wasn't the type of guy who panicked. Once upon a time in what felt like somebody else's life, this had been because nothing worthy of panic had ever happened to him. Now, when his basis for comparison was 'being held in a cave by multinational terrorists,' nothing else would ever seem panic-worthy again. Tony's life was weird, and he was over it. His major feeling in regards to Jarvis' transformation was annoyance at the inconvenience it was causing him.
Pepper must have been having a busy day, because she didn't pick up until the fourth ring. "Miss Potts speaking," she said, wary. It wasn't often that she got a call on her personal phone from a number she didn't recognize.
"Morning, Pepper," said Tony.
"Tony?" she asked. "Where are you? I've been trying to get in touch with you all morning but I keep getting a recording telling me the house number isn't in service. Are you out on a mission?"
"No, I'm in a hotel," said Tony. "We're having some technical difficulties." He heard a clank and a yelp from the bathroom, and hoped Jarvis hadn't slipped and cracked his head open on the tile. They would probably need him whole and unharmed in order to reverse whatever the hell it was Dr. Strange had done. "Listen, Pepper..."
"Why are you in a hotel?" she asked.
"Because the main AI in the house is down. That's why the phones aren't working. Pepper," he said, "did Dr. Strange say anything to you before he disappeared this morning?"
"No..." she said slowly. "He was still there when I left. I could hear him talking to JARVIS. Did something happen?"
Tony explained.
There was a long silence.
"Tony," Pepper said at last, "are you drunk?"
"No!" he said. "I'm dead serious. He's in the shower right now." He'd been in there about ten minutes, actually, and Tony wondered if he ought to knock on the door and tell Jarvis that was long enough. Then he remembered just how dirty Jarvis had been, and decided he could leave him a little longer. "Come on up and you can see him for yourself."
"I can't come on anywhere," Pepper said in her business voice. "I have things to do today. So do you. And that reminds me," she added. "Captain Rogers was here looking for you."
"He was?" Tony turned that over in his brain. If Steve were in California looking for Tony, it was probably something Avengers-related, but Iron Man was going to be out of commission for the foreseeable future. That was a problem Fury would be interested in solving, provided he could be made to believe the cause of it – which shouldn't be too hard. Nick Fury seemed like a guy who had practice believing six impossible things before breakfast. "Tell him where I am," Tony decided, "but cancel everything else today. I'll let you know about tomorrow."
Pepper sighed. "Tony, just because you're not the CEO anymore doesn't mean..."
He interrupted her. "Pep, believe me, I'd like to get this stuff done, but..." there was a knock at the door. "Okay, that's either the doctor or the guys with my clothes. Gimme a sec." He wedged the phone between his head and his shoulder, and went to open the door. To his surprise, it was not the doctor, or anyone delivering clothing.
"Pepper?" Tony said to the phone. "Don't worry about calling Steve. He found me." He covered the phone and looked up in confusion at Steve Rogers. "What did they do, beam you down?" he asked. "Because I just told Pepper to tell you where I was, about thirty seconds ago."
"I heard it on the radio, actually," Steve replied. "They said the police were called to this hotel when a couple of naked guys tried to check in, but left when it turned out it was just Tony Stark. Amazing how fast news travels, isn't it?"
Tony nodded. "Right. Pepper?" He uncovered the phone again.
"Tony," she said, "you're supposed to give a presentation on your seismology project this week. And there are those people coming to see you about movie rights..."
"I said cancel everything," Tony told her. "I gotta go, okay? We'll figure this out later. Love you!"
He hung up, and moved aside to let Steve in. "Fury told me you'd met Dr. Strange," he remembered. The director of SHIELD had also at least implied what kind of conversation the two Stevens had held. "What did he say when you asked him?"
"He told me magic isn't for changing the past," Steve replied. "It's for changing the future."
"Uh-huh. Well," Tony said sourly, "yesterday I had a pretty good idea what my immediate future was all about, and today it's all gone to hell, so bravo, I guess."
"Why?" Steve wanted to know. "What did you ask him?"
"I didn't ask him anything," said Tony. "You'd better sit down, buddy, I've got a story to tell you. And just to preface," he added, "I am not drunk. Although I'm starting to think it would help." Steve sat down on the sofa, and Tony plunked himself in a chair opposite. "Here's what happened."
Jarvis was not the type who panicked any more than Tony was, but in his case it was because he didn't know how. Panic wasn't something that happened in Tony Stark's house, and it certainly wasn't an emotion Jarvis had been programmed for. He, too, was managing to maintain his composure in this disconcerting situation, but it was mainly because he didn't know any other way to conduct himself. Underneath his calm exterior, there was considerably more going on: not panic, maybe, but definite distress, a good measure of fear, and a new and extremely unsettling sense of physicality.
He was accustomed, of course, to dealing with information about sizes and locations, but only as it applied to things other than himself – JARVIS inhabited Mr. Stark's entire house and much of the grounds as well, controlling everything from the robots and computers to the phones and the sprinklers, but he'd never considered that as his 'body'. Indeed, he'd never thought of himself as having a physical being at all – he was simply code that lived in the circuitry, and ideas like 'position' and 'motion' simply didn't apply to him.
Now, however, there was endless positional feedback. It was something like acting through the laboratory robots, when he needed to be constantly aware of the positions of their manipulating arms relative to the objects he was working with. But instead of requiring observation and calculation, it seemed to happen all by itself. He knew, without thinking about it, the exact location of every part of this body, and was startled and fascinated to discover that he could, if he wished, raise a finger and touch the end of his nose even with his eyes shut. There was a strong sensation that he wasn't just in this body, as he'd been in the house computer or in the Iron Man suit, but that he was this body.
Compared to infusing an entire building and the land around, seeing through dozens of cameras and interacting through hundreds of machines, this body of flesh and blood seemed very tiny and limited – not to mention appallingly fragile. Jarvis' close encounter with the rose bushes had brought home to him, in a quite visceral and thorny sort of way, just how easy it would be to injure himself. Being seized by the security guard was absolutely the most frightening thing that had ever happened to him, and it was made worse by the knowledge that humans could not be upgraded or repaired in the way machines could. Any damage he sustained would have permanent consequences. What a frightening thought.
And that brought up the question of maintenance. Humans required a great deal of care: they had to eat, to wash, to breathe, to sleep, to void wastes, to mate. Mr. Stark's home required a lot of upkeep, too, but Jarvis' programming had always told him exactly what tasks needed doing and when. He'd always suspected that humans did not have such internal notifications – otherwise Miss Potts would not have had to remind Mr. Stark, as she regularly did, to stop working and have a rest or a meal – but he'd been dismayed to realize that the human brain lacked even a functional clock. Jarvis was still aware of the passage of time, but he had no idea what time it actually was. All things considered, it was enough to leave him in serious doubt about his ability to look after this body.
Worst of all, however, was how difficult it was to think. JARVIS had been one of the most powerful artificial intelligences on Earth. His 'brain' was housed in a room full of super-fast processors, performing trillions of calculations every second and storing the results in petabytes and petabytes of memory – but he knew that humans were still smarter than he was, and able to think in ways that he could not. So why was his thinking now so slow? He was finding that he could only really pay attention to one thing at a time, and if his thoughts wandered off, he might forget what he'd been trying to think about in the first place. Was he merely unfamiliar with how the human brain processed information, or was his programming somehow incompatible with this – for lack of a better word – hardware?
Whatever the case, he could only hope that Mr. Stark managed to contact Dr. Strange quickly, and that the whole unpleasant experience would be of short duration.
Mr. Stark had ordered him to wash. The hot water in the shower was extremely uncomfortable at first but quickly improved, and Jarvis spent quite a long time standing under the spray, wiping away the dirt, sap, and crushed leaves he'd picked up on his clumsy trip through the garden. Touch was a new sense to him and he wasn't sure he liked it: the warmth was pleasant, but he could also feel every drop of water that drummed against his back, and his scrapes and bruises stung when he touched them. Was skin supposed to be so sensitive? Smell was a novelty, too – the soap the hotel had provided had a tangy floral scent, which Jarvis decided he didn't mind at all.
When Mr. Stark showered it might take anywhere from five minutes to an hour, depending on what he'd been doing beforehand and how much of a hurry he was in. Jarvis wasn't sure how long he was expected to spend washing, so he simply kept at it until he heard somebody knock on the bathroom door.
"Jarvis!" it was Mr. Stark. "Come on out, the tailors are here!"
"I will be there directly, Sir!" Jarvis replied.
He shut off the shower and stepped out, water running down his body to make puddles on the tiles. When he opened the door, he got a bit of a nasty shock: there were now eight people in the room. Mr. Stark was on his feet, looking annoyed while a woman, most likely the doctor, inspected his right shoulder. Four men, the tailors, were setting up a seamstress' dummy and getting out books and samples. Finally, a hotel employee had brought in a cart of food, and was pouring coffee for Captain Rogers, who was sitting on the sofa. Jarvis was used to being aware of everyone around him and what they were doing, and it frightened him a little to realize that all these strangers had arrived without him even noticing. And for some reason, they were all staring at him.
The hotel employee was the first to speak. She coughed politely, then said, "there are robes on the back of the door, Mr. Jarvis."
"Yeah, throw one of those on, would you?" asked Mr. Stark, appearing to find something very interesting on the ceiling.
Jarvis looked behind the door – there were two robes, made of the same white terry as the towels and washcloths. Jarvis chose one and, after some fumbling, got his arms into it. Then he tied it in front as he'd seen Mr. Stark do with his own monogrammed robes at home, and decided immediately that he did not like the way it felt. The hot water seemed to have made his skin more sensitive still, and he was acutely aware of every place where the cloth touched him. How did people bear wearing clothing all the time if this was what it felt like?
Knotting the sash seemed to be a signal for everyone else in the room to relax. The man who'd been working on the dummy left it and came to shake Jarvis' hand, which he did somewhat gingerly, perhaps on account of the fact that Jarvis was still wet.
"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jarvis," he said, with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I'm Greg, from Martelli and Sons tailors. Come right this way, and we'll start fitting you. You're a friend of Mr. Stark's?"
"He's an employee," Mr. Stark said. "He's my, uh, my Senior Technologies Assistant."
Greg nodded and pulled a measuring tape out of his pocket. "Stand still, please," he said.
Captain Rogers had watched this exchange without comment. Now he put down his coffee cup and turned to look out the window with one hand over his mouth, as if he were in danger of bursting out laughing. Jarvis failed to see the joke.
"How is your shoulder, Sir?" he asked, as the tailors began measuring him.
"Just a sprain," said Mr. Stark. "Lucky break – I think that guy could have taken the whole arm if he'd wanted."
"I can't imagine what he would have done with it," Jarvis said, but Mr. Stark's statement had made something inside him flutter. The security guard had hurt Mr. Stark, and Jarvis had been completely unable to do anything about it, even to summon help. That troubled him deeply. If Jarvis were unsure whether he'd be able to take care of himself in this form, how on earth was he supposed to take care of Mr. Stark? That was, after all, his entire purpose, the task he'd been designed and built for. Mr. Stark had never gone out of his way to make it an easy or enjoyable job, but doing it was the only reason Jarvis existed in any form. If he could no longer look after Mr. Stark and make sure he had what he needed, manage his house and run his Iron Man suits, then what was the point of Jarvis being here at all?
He didn't think the same idea had occurred to Mr. Stark yet. After all, if it had, Mr. Stark would be fixing it. That wouldn't be difficult for him to do. He would just have to create a new OS for the house computer, and then...
... and then, what would happen to Jarvis?