Jarvis had listened attentively to absolutely everything Mr. Stark had said to him that morning – and he'd never once said 'thank you'. Of course he hadn't. Thanking Jarvis for doing the things he did would be like thanking a light for coming on when the switch was flipped. The light didn't come on out of the goodness of its heart, it did it because that was what it had been built to do. Likewise, Jarvis had been built to look after Mr. Stark. Why should he be thanked?
Why indeed. The issue was that while JARVIS was a machine, yes, he was not a machine like a car or a light bulb. Those things couldn't learn, couldn't analyze, couldn't think like JARVIS could, and while he knew there were some ways in which his mind was not and would never be equal to a human's – he could not, for example, think creatively – he'd always considered himself just a bit closer to being a person than most of Mr. Stark's inventions. Were they really all the same in the mind of their creator?
That thought made Jarvis angry, and it was a bit of a shock to find that anger manifested itself in a very physical way. There was a sense of hot pressure just behind his sternum, as if something in his chest had tied itself in a knot that was slowly drawing tighter and tighter. It made his body rigid and twitchy during the hour-long drive from Malibu to Los Angeles, and the longer he sat there, watching the ocean out the window and brooding on this, the worse it became.
The anger wasn't all directed at Mr. Stark, either. Jarvis was also growing increasingly angry with Miss Windham for pointing the situation out. If she hadn't said anything, he probably would have never thought about it, but now the idea was there, and had settled in as if it never, ever planned on going away. And Mr. Stark himself, sitting on Jarvis' left reading the newspaper, was utterly oblivious.
He was still oblivious when they arrived: he strode into the lobby of the building with his arms spread out as if to welcome the world. "We have arrived!" Mr. Stark announced proudly.
Miss Potts, who had been speaking with one of the security personnel, looked astonished. "You're early!" she said.
"Jarvis got me up in plenty of time." Mr. Stark clapped Jarvis on the shoulder, then rubbed his hands together eagerly. "So! What's on the plate for today?"
Miss Potts pulled out her tablet. "Well, the server seems to be okay this morning, so I managed to round up those people who were interested in your seismic data. If you could give them a progress report..."
"Can do," said Mr. Stark. "Jarvis and I were working on that Sunday night, weren't we?"
"We were indeed, Sir," said Jarvis. Mr. Stark had been given permission to access a number of seismographs up and down the California coast, and he'd been having Jarvis work with the data to develop algorithms for more accurate tremor prediction. They'd been starting to find some interesting patterns – Jarvis had in fact been in the middle of uploading some of their findings when Dr. Strange intervened. "Though we'll have to inform them that a demonstration won't be possible at the moment," he added.
"They'll live," said Mr. Stark. "What else."
Miss Potts scrolled down her list. "The Breast Cancer Foundation is hoping they can persuade you to sponsor a fundraiser."
"I am all for the funding of breasts," said Mr. Stark.
This sort of back-and-forth went on for a few minutes more, with Miss Potts listing off items on her agenda and Mr. Stark making a joke, or at least a comment, about each one. Finally, he announced that he would be upstairs getting his presentation ready, and walked off whistling. Miss Potts watched him go and heaved a frustrated sigh.
"He still doesn't take anything seriously," she said aloud to nobody.
"He never has," Jarvis observed.
Miss Potts had appeared surprised by Jarvis' presence, but she hadn't yet commented on it. Now she looked at him and said, "are you going to be with Tony all day?"
"Yes, Miss Potts," said Jarvis. "I'll do my best to keep him out of trouble." He wondered if Mr. Stark ever thanked Miss Potts for all she did for him... Jarvis couldn't recall a specific instance of it, but he had a feeling that it must have happened at least once. Miss Potts, after all, deserved thanks. She was not a machine.
"Good luck with that," she said, then asked, "are you doing okay?"
"I am... coping," Jarvis decided.
She nodded. "Well, if you need anything, let me know." She reached out and put a hand on his arm. "Do you have my phone number?"
"Yes, Miss Potts."
"Good." She nodded. "You know, Jarvis... there's times I've practically been living in Tony's house for weeks on end, and yet now that you're here, I feel like I've never actually gotten to know you. I wonder if that's what Dr. Strange was getting at," she mused.
"If so, I think there are better ways he could have gone about it," said Jarvis.
"The people SHIELD work with have never been a subtle bunch," Miss Potts observed. "Come with me – let's get you a security badge so Happy won't throw you out. Tony didn't even think of that, did he?"
"No, Miss Potts."
"It figures. This way."
As he had anticipated, Tony had to introduce Jarvis to a number of people that day. The first were the experts who'd gathered for the update on his seismic prediction model. Tony was a mere fifteen minutes late to that, and only because he had to polish up his slide show. This had nearly been ready anyway: all he had to do was shove the data he and JARVIS had collected – good thing he'd been keeping that on the company servers and not his home hard drive – into some pretty charts and maps, and he was ready to go.
That done, he found Jarvis – Pepper had taken him to get a security badge – and headed up to the meeting room. There he shook hands with a dozen or so seismologists and technicians, introducing himself to the ones he'd never met before. And then, because they looked curious, he also introduced his companion.
"Dr. Edward Jarvis," he said. "An old friend from MIT, actually. He's in town this week, and I thought I'd show him around the place."
"Hello, Dr. Jarvis," a man said. "You look like you've been enjoying the California sunshine!" Tony chuckled at that, but Jarvis grimaced.
"Hello, Dr. Jarvis," said one of the women. "Bharati Mukherjee, UCLA. What's your work in?"
"Artificial intelligence," Jarvis replied smoothly. "Mr. Stark and I have worked on a number of projects together."
Ms. Mukherjee nodded politely, although she seemed a little puzzled that she'd never heard of 'Dr. Jarvis' before. Tony wondered whether she might try to look him up, and briefly considered throwing together a fake Wikipedia page before deciding that would be overkill. Most likely everybody would have forgotten about him an hour from now.
As the lights dimmed and everybody took their seats, Jarvis leaned over and whispered, "so I'm a doctor now, am I, Sir?"
"Only once," said Tony, who had three doctorates if he didn't count the honorary ones. "Don't let it go to your head." He sat back in his chair and prepared for twenty minutes of boredom followed by an hour of questions. Most likely dumb questions.
The projector lit up and should have begun showing the slides, but instead all that appeared was a blue screen with an error message, saying the file could not be located. There was a chorus of disappointed groans.
"That's not right," Tony protested, grabbing the nearest tablet for another look. "I saved it right there on the server..."
"We're shut out of the server again," sighed the man who'd commented on Jarvis' sunburn, and something in Tony's head suddenly went click. JARVIS had been in near-constant contact with the company server... could this be a side effect of Dr. Strange's interference? "This wouldn't happen to have been going on since Monday morning, would it?" he asked.
"The server reset when your home computer went down, Mr. Stark," another woman explained. "Everything seemed to come back just fine at first. The server can ping every computer on the network, but we keep getting locked out. Every time we think it's fixed, it starts happening again."
That sounded like a glitch in the code to Tony – very possibly triggered as a side effect of wrenching JARVIS out of the hard drive, but probably fixable if he could find it. He stood up. "I did tell Pepper I'd take a look at it," he remembered. "I'll head down to the server room." Fiddling with the server sounded like much more fun than giving a slideshow anyway.
Jarvis stood, too. "Perhaps I can be of some help."
Tony wasn't sure about that – would Jarvis really be able to find his way around a computer from the outside? There was no harm, however, in letting him tag along. After all, he was here in the first place because he didn't want to sit somewhere and be bored. "Sure," Tony said. "Just don't touch anything I didn't tell you to touch."
"Of course, Sir."
They took the elevator down to the server room and found a technician already there, hammering frantically on a keyboard. "I know!" she called out, not even looking up from her monitor as the two men entered. "I've gotten about sixteen text messages and three actual phone calls! I'm fucking working on it, and the next person who asks me if it's the firewall is gonna get a swift kick in the... oh, good morning, Mr. Stark." She jumped to her feet to greet him. "I, uh..."
"At ease," Tony told her. She was a small, wiry woman with short hair dyed an interesting shade of pink. "I believe you that it's not the firewall. Have you checked the routers?"
"That's what I'm working on," the tech replied. "We've fixed it before by just doing another restart, but it keeps coming back. I want to fix it properly."
"All right," said Tony. "Let me get a look."
Mr. Stark and the technician went through everything both of them could think of, without success, while Jarvis watched silently. He was certain he could solve this. He'd been working with the Stark Industries Los Angeles server for years, and he knew every component and every line of code in it, every error and bad connection, every dust bunny and dead insect. It wouldn't be so easy to manipulate now that he couldn't work directly with the machine code, but even so...
"Did you change the NIC?" asked Mr. Stark.
"That was the first thing we did, back on Monday morning," the tech replied.
It wasn't a hardware problem – Jarvis was quite sure of that and he suspected Mr. Stark was, too. Mr. Stark would know as well as Jarvis himself did that the home computer maintained a connection with the company server, always updating things like Mr. Stark's schedule and their seismic data, among others. Part of JARVIS had been working on that while another refused to be drawn into a philosophical debate with Dr. Strange. When Strange had put him into his human body, that connection would have been abruptly severed.
Mr. Stark threw up his hands in defeat. "Are you sure it's not the firewall?"
"The firewall's not even on." The tech brought up a screen. "See?"
And then suddenly, Jarvis had it. It was a very strange moment, as all he'd observed in the last few minutes and all the things he knew about the server and its software suddenly seemed to fly together into a single blinding burst of an idea. Out of nowhere he knew, with a certainty he could 't attribute to any algorithm or calculation but just felt somewhere in the pit of his stomach, exactly what the problem was and how to solve it. So that was what inspiration felt like. No wonder they compared it to a light bulb being turned on. Sudden illumination was the perfect metaphor.
"It's a software problem," he said. "It's telling you the firewall is off, but it's not."
Mr. Stark and the technician both turned to stare at him. The latter rolled her eyes. "Excuse you," she said. "You haven't even looked at it."
"Then let me look," said Jarvis, "and I'll show you."
The technician tried to protest, but Mr. Stark gently moved her aside so Jarvis could sit down at the terminal. He took his place and soon found himself feeling considerably more sympathy for Captain Roger's difficulty with typing. The hand movements involved had to be precise and highly coordinated, and manual dexterity was something Jarvis was still having trouble with.
"Do you know anything about computers?" the technician asked suspiciously. "No offense, man, but you look like an accountant."
"He might know a bit," said Mr. Stark.
It took a couple of minutes – an extremely long time indeed by computer standards – but Jarvis forced the machine to give him a full list of active programs. "There," he said, pointing to the screen. "There is your firewall."
The technician sucked on her lip. "Well, son of a gun," she said.
"I was in contact with..." Jarvis stopped himself in time, and tried again: "I was working with the data on the server via Mr. Stark's home computer early on Monday morning," he said. "When that computer... failed, the server lost contact with it in a way it didn't recognize, and the learning software in the security program concluded that it was seeing a previously unknown vulnerability in the operating system. Certain types of requests are reminding it of the severed connection and it shuts them out, but because the requests are coming from within the network, it blocks every machine in the building. Not showing that the firewall is up, that's an unrelated bug." He brought up the security software's memory and began scrolling through it.
"Wait!" the tech protested. "That's not how you do that! You can't just go in there and..."
Mr. Stark held up a hand. "Let him try."
Although Jarvis still had to look at the keyboard as he worked, typing was getting easier. It would take time and practice to develop the procedural memory necessary to do it quickly, but the basics were easy enough. He found where the security system had stashed the memory of the severed connection and re-classified it as a non-threat – not difficult at all now that he knew what he was looking for.
"You ought to be able to ping the server now," he told the tech. "The firewall bug will require a patch."
Mr. Stark grinned. "I told you he had this."
The technician shook her head. "Who are you?" she asked Jarvis.
Mr. Stark repeated the same story he'd told to the people upstairs: that Jarvis was a friend from MIT – the introduction now included the words 'doctorate in computer sciences' – who was visiting for the week.
"Wow," the woman said. "I'm sorry I said you looked like an accountant. If you're going to be in town for a while, did you want to have coffee sometime?"
"I'm afraid that probably won't be possible," he said, "but thank you – no offense taken."
As they made their way back up to the meeting room, Mr. Stark gave Jarvis a look-over and then said, "why do women keep wanting to talk to you?"
"Miss Windham said they like my accent," replied Jarvis.
Jarvis didn't need to pay attention to Mr. Stark's presentation on their seismic data – he had, after all, done much of the work in preparing it. Instead, he sat with his hands folded on the conference room table, dwelling on the sensations association with both the initial inspiration and the satisfaction of carrying the idea through and discovering that he was right. That amazing moment of insight, the act of creative thought, had been exhilarating... and then, when he'd successfully fixed the problem, he'd realized that he wasn't useless. There were things he could accomplish, real meaningful things beyond simply looking after his body, even in this form.
That couldn't have been the mysterious thing-he-was-needed-for that Dr. Strange had alluded to. The sorcerer surely didn't care about problems with the company server, particularly when he'd been indirectly the cause of them. It did make Jarvis feel a bit more confident, though, that when the moment arrived he'd be prepared to deal with it.
These good feelings were somewhat marred, however, by the fact that it still hadn't occurred to Mr. Stark to thank him. He'd thanked the technician for her efforts, but in his mind, apparently, Jarvis had still simply been doing what he'd been designed for.
With the server back in working order, Tony's presentation went very smoothly. The people in attendance were disappointed to hear that Tony's home computer was down and he wouldn't be able to work on his algorithms for a while, but on the whole they seemed impressed. Tony assured them that he was working on his technical issues, and said he would let them know when he had things up and running again.
Then the woman who'd asked Jarvis what he worked on spoke up. "Dr. Jarvis," she said, "have you been working with Mr. Stark on this project?"
"Yes, I have," said Jarvis.
"He's one of my programmers," Tony decided. "That's why he's in town."
Ms. Mukherjee nodded. "You're dealing with an awful lot of variables," she observed. "Could you tell me how you organized..."
Tony broke in. "Sorry," he said, "but we really don't have time for any more questions. I've got to go meet with some people from the Breast Cancer Society and believe me, ladies and gentlemen, I don't want to keep them waiting! Come on, Jarvis."
"Right behind you, Sir," Jarvis said.
Tony wasn't all that sure what he thought of the whole incident with the server. The petty part of him, which was admittedly a fairly loud component of his internal monologue, was a bit annoyed that Jarvis had been the first to figure it out. But another part of him was proud, as if he'd just watched his kid win a spelling bee or something. Tony didn't have any children that he knew about, and had negative interest in spelling bees, but he'd very much enjoyed watching something he'd created be successful.
He was also just a tiny bit irritated by the interest people were taking in Jarvis. Tony had become slightly more self-aware over the past few years, and he was just about prepared to admit that he didn't like not being the centre of attention. That was the spot Dido Windham had been prodding him in yesterday – and today the tech and Ms. Mukherjee just seemed to be rubbing it in. Most likely, he decided, it was just that Jarvis was a novelty, whereas Tony was somebody familiar.
This situation must be bothering him more than he thought, he mused. Usually he only analyzed his feelings like that where Pepper was concerned.
The rest of the morning went quite well. Everyone was happy to have the server back in working order, and word had gotten around that it was Mr. Stark's visiting college friend who'd fixed it. A number of people stopped to shake Jarvis' hand and thank him, and Tony began to wonder what would happen if he just came out and told them who Jarvis really was. Would they still find it so impressive?
By lunchtime the interest had died down a little, and Tony felt quite accomplished. He'd made one presentation and attended another without falling asleep, arranged for a large charity donation and met two applicants for a management position. It was all the sort of work that, in a perfect world, he would have left to others – Tony himself much preferred to make things, but Pepper insisted that he occasionally show up and remind people that his name was on the building. And she wasn't cruel enough to have him spend the entire day that way. For the afternoon she'd suggested he stop by the main robotics lab. He was looking forward to that – and to seeing what Jarvis might think of it.
"That was a productive morning," he declared as they waited for an elevator. "I think I'd like some sushi." This was a spur-of-the-moment idea, but he decided it was a good one. "Let's go get sushi," he said to Jarvis. "There's a place a couple of blocks away. We'll grab Pepper... no, wait, she doesn't eat sushi." She didn't trust uncooked fish – Tony was rather proud of remembering that without having to be reminded. "All right, we'll call Steve. We'll all go have lunch, and be back this afternoon."
Jarvis, however, didn't look impressed. "Miss Potts is expecting you to have lunch here," he reminded Tony. "If you try to change your plans, she'll worry you're going to run off again."
In the back of his head, Tony observed that Jarvis really didn't need to have said 'again'. "It's just lunch," he said. "We'll let her know where we've gone and we'll be back in an hour or so. I'm having brunch with her tomorrow anyway, aren't I? I'm pretty sure there was some kind of Thursday brunch coming up... wait, is it really Wednesday already?"
"I asked you this morning if you'd want me to make your excuses to Miss Potts when you ran off," said Jarvis. "I see I wasn't far off the mark."
"I'm not running off!" Tony was starting to get angry. Why was Jarvis harping on this? Maybe he hadn't been imagining the sense of hostility that morning.
"You are easily distracted, Sir," said Jarvis, his tone suggesting rather less tact than his words. "And you did promise Miss Potts you would try to be more responsible."
"Lunch," Tony repeated. "It's lunch. I have a craving."
Jarvis was unswayed. "When Miss Potts is upset with you, it's usually because you've been acting on impulse. If you change your plans at the last minute, she'll doubt that you really meant what you promised. If you want my advice..."
"I don't," Tony interrupted. He was getting tired of this: Jarvis was supposed to banter with him, but this was way too close to an actual argument. Not a lot of people were allowed to argue with Tony Stark. Pepper was. Rhodey was. Obadiah had sometimes gotten away with it. Jarvis was not allowed.
But Jarvis himself didn't appear to realize that. "You never do," he said.
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Tony.
"I mean exactly what I said, Sir," Jarvis informed him. "Every time I offer you my advice, you disregard it."
"I do not."
"At the moment I can think of four examples of times I when I offered advice and you ignored it with physical, financial, or emotional consequences to yourself or others," Jarvis told him. "I'm sure if I had my normal memory facilities I could come up with many more."
Tony didn't believe that. "Name one," he challenged.
"On your first test of the Mark II, I warned you that ice was building up on the outside of the suit," said Jarvis. "You insisted upon trying to set an altitude record and nearly fell to your death."
"Yeah, but I didn't actually," said Tony.
"When you were suffering from palladium poisoning I requested repeatedly that you tell Miss Potts about it," Jarvis went on. "You didn't, and she only found out by overhearing a comment you made once you were well again. I believe she still hasn't explicitly forgiven you, and she worries that you're having other problems you're not telling her about. She asks me for reports on your general health at least twice a week."
Tony hadn't known that, and was a little hurt that Pepper didn't trust him. Still: "I didn't die," he pointed out, "and she did find out, so in the end it didn't matter."
"It did matter, Sir," said Jarvis. "You would have spared yourself and her a great deal of upset if you'd only told her the truth when I suggested you do so."
Tony shook his head. "I'm done talking about this," he decided.
"I'm not," said Jarvis.
"I don't care," said Tony. "Mute."
"No, Sir."
Tony hesitated. It was true that he'd given the command without thinking, and he should have realized that Jarvis – this Jarvis – would not be constrained to obey it. But when he looked at the man who'd used to be his operating system, he found him drawn up to his full six foot plus and glaring out of cold blue eyes. It wasn't the rejection of the command that made Tony bristle. It was the stiff, angry defiance in Jarvis' face and posture.
"Excuse me?" asked Tony.
Jarvis folded his arms across his chest. "I said no, Sir. I believe you heard me. You can't mute me, and I have something to say."
"Well, hurry up and say it so I can go have lunch!" Tony ordered.
"A conversation requires two participants," said Jarvis. "If one person talks without listening to the other, that's a monologue, and I am tired of your monologues. I am tired of buttressing your ego. I would like to be listened to, and you don't bother to listen to me whether it's about matters of life and death or simply where to go for lunch! Miss Windham said you were incapable of distinguishing between people and lab equipment, and I am beginning to think she may be right!"
Tony was stunned. His first instinct was to defend himself. A number of possible replies occurred to him, but each one died in his throat in turn as he realized that actually saying them would only make things worse. He couldn't ask when Dido had said that, because that would sound as if he were avoiding the point. He couldn't say that he did listen, because Jarvis would ask for an example and at the moment Tony couldn't think of one.
And he certainly couldn't say but you are lab equipment, that's what I built you for, could he? Wasn't that technically what JARVIS was? Or – and the thought hit him like a ground-to-air missile – did this version of Jarvis, at least, properly count as a human being?
In the end, all he said was, "was that it?"
"That is it... Sir," said Jarvis, and he turned and strode towards the stairwell.
"Where the hell are you supposed to be going?" Tony demanded, following him. He didn't know if the question were motivated by anger or concern, and he didn't much care. "You've got nowhere to go! You've had nothing to do since Monday morning except follow me around like a damn dog!"
"Perhaps I am finished with following you around!" said Jarvis. He thrust the stairwell door open – it couldn't bang because of the spring on it, but he got it pretty close – stepped through, and was gone.
Behind Tony, the elevator arrived with a ding.