Now that they knew where and approximately how strong the explosion had been, Jarvis and Tony got to work on modelling the wave that would result and figuring out exactly how to counter it. They sat on opposite sides of Pepper's desk: Tony scrawled calculations across pages and pages of foolscap, and Jarvis took these and translated them into computer code, occasionally adding small annotations or corrections in tiny block capitals, as neat as copperplate print. This was somewhat fascinating to Tony: Jarvis' handwriting was another of the weirder concepts that this situation had produced.
Pepper had coffee brought up, which Tony and Jarvis both accepted – the latter added several packets of sugar to his. For the most part they worked in silence, but there was no hostility now, at least not so far as Tony could detect. He was willing to admit that his hostility radar was probably not well-tuned, but all he felt when he caught Jarvis' eye was a quiet, firm rapport. The nearest thing he could have likened it to was those moments in the heat of battle when the two of them had to think of unison – only this was less loud and had fewer aliens. It made Tony look forward again to working on the new projector. Maybe they could even do that this afternoon... but probably not. They were all going to be dead on their feet by this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow.
Dido didn't have much to do now, so she paced and stared at the paintings on the walls, and looked over people's shoulders to see what they were working on. She nosed in to flip through a few pages of Tony's notes, then glanced across at Jarvis and said, "I wouldn't have thought you'd be the type who liked Guns N Roses."
Tony raised his head. "What?"
"I'm sorry?" Jarvis asked.
"You were singing under your breath," Dido said.
"Was I?" Jarvis frowned and hummed a couple of bars, then said, "Carry on my Wayward Son is by Kansas, not Guns N Roses."
"He gets it from me," said Tony. "We listen to music while we work together." Was that what had prompted Jarvis to start singing to himself – because this was a situation he would have expected to be playing music in? "That's what we need in here!" Tony decided. "Some music! Let's see what Pepper's got in her playlist." He turned the laptop around and brought up iTunes.
"That's an awful lot of code," said Dido, looking at the window Jarvis had been working with. "I hope you haven't made any mistakes."
"Not likely," Jarvis told her. "Most of these algorithms already existed as part of our seismic prediction project. I'm just adapting them."
Dido looked around at the scattered notes. Nothing on them, Tony knew, looked much like computer code. "From memory?" she asked.
Pepper stood up to provide a distraction. "Dido," she said, "I just found them... when the man came to try to sell me Odalisque in Garden with Poppies, I managed to sneak a few photos." She held out her tablet.
"You did?" Dido left Tony and Jarvis and went to look. "Okay, now I'm pretty sure the painting I saw was smaller than that. You couldn't see the fountain over here," she pointed, "or the post on the gazebo."
The women stepped aside to talk about art, and Tony downloaded some actual Guns N Roses for him and Jarvis to listen to while they finished their analysis. By the time Rhodey arrived, they were nearly done. The program Jarvis had put together worked with three sets of variables: time, location, and the force of the explosion that would be needed. Given a number for any one of them, the computer could generate a curve for the other two. The results weren't particularly reassuring: it looked like they were rapidly running out of time. If they couldn't set something off by about nine AM, their blast would have to fall dangerously close to the San Andreas fault. Preventing a tsunami wouldn't be much to brag about if they set off an earthquake instead.
When Rhodey arrived, Tony went to meet him in the lobby. His first words to his friend were, "not a moment too soon!"
"Tony!" Rhodey greeted him with a fist bump. "You look like you've had a hell of a week."
"I have had a hell of a week," Tony agreed. "My house is offline, my ex-girlfriend is in town, there's a tidal wave headed straight for us, and I think Jarvis got laid."
Rhodey came to what was probably the most sensible conclusion. "A computer virus?" he said. "Is that what happened?"
"No, I was being literal," said Tony. "I'll explain on the way up. We don't have a lot of time."
"So what else is new?" asked Rhodey.
The situation had gotten substantially more complicated than it had been when Tony explained it to Happy the previous afternoon. He did his best. When Pepper first heard about Jarvis she'd been dismissive; Steve had been curious, Fury annoyed, and Happy skeptical. Rhodey's reaction was harder to gauge. Years in the military and years of putting up with Tony had given him ample opportunity to perfect his poker face.
The elevator doors opened, and Tony led his friend back to Pepper's office, where he took a moment to make sure Rhodey knew who everybody was. "Agent Wheeler I think you talked to on the phone," he said. "I don't know if she's got a first name..."
"It's Patricia," said Wheeler. "Don't call me by it."
Tony made a note. "And I can't recall whether you met Dido," he went on.
"Oh, we met," said Dido. "At your birthday party, actually – I'm not surprised you don't remember. Nice to see you again, Colonel."
"Thank you, Miss Windham," Rhodey replied, and then approached the man sitting at Pepper's desk. "You must be Jarvis." He extended a hand.
Jarvis accepted it. "Always a pleasure, Colonel Rhodes."
"Huh," was all Rhodey said. He gave Tony a look that meant he'd want to hear more about this when the emergency was over – but for now, the tidal wave was allowed to take precedence.
By this time, the map they'd spread out on the table was thoroughly drawn on, not to mention scattered with pages of notes, empty coffee cups both paper and ceramic, and crumbs from the box of cookies that had been brought in with the coffee. Dido started to gather these up, but Jarvis stopped her.
"I had our seismology project files backed up on the company server," he explained, "and I think for this demonstration our holographic map will be easier to work with." He dimmed the lights in the room and the projector flickered to life, drawing a wireframe map of the ocean bottom in the air above the table. The location of the Ao Guang mining complex popped up in red, as did the seismographs that had provided their data, and glowing green indicated major population centres.
"The shape of the sea floor and effects of the prevailing currents suggest that the wave will arrive between between 12:12 and 12:17 this afternoon," Jarvis explained, as the shape of the wave's path lit up in brighter blue ripples. "Our window of opportunity is shrinking rapidly, but I've found a way to buy us an extra half hour." Three yellow points appeared, indicating places on the continental margin offshore. "Barring unforeseen circumstances, a set of smaller explosions at these sites, in a timed sequence, should neutralize the wave without over-stressing the fault line."
Rhodey nodded. "I don't know a lot about seismology," he said, "but I trust that you guys know what you're doing. The nearest carrier is the USS Van Buren. Fury's been in touch with the captain, and they're waiting for instructions."
"I can send them the data as soon as I have their internet protocol address," said Jarvis.
Tony was a little surprised. "That's it?" he asked. "We just send them the graphs and we're done?"
"Normally in an operation like this, we'd want you guys to join us on board as consultants," Rhodey said, "but it'd take at least forty-five minutes just to get you there, so the easiest way to save time is to have you supervise by teleconference instead."
That would save time – and time was a precious resource right now – but that didn't mean Tony was happy with it. He was used to taking personal charge of things, and as soon as he heard that most of the practical stuff would be out of his hands, he immediately thought of half a dozen things that might go wrong. If he'd had the Iron Man suit he could have just gotten the coordinates of the Van Buren and hopped on over, data and all. Tony spent a moment wishing really hard that Dr. Strange would suddenly come back – but then he changed his mind. That would have ramifications he didn't want to deal with at the moment. Better just to make do.
"Well, at least we can all clean up," he sighed. After being kidnapped in the rain, sitting for hours in a filthy basement, going to bed without taking a shower, and then working through the night, it probably wasn't much fun to be in the room with him. Everybody needed to wash up and eat, and Tony and Jarvis both needed to shave – Jarvis hadn't shaved since he'd arrived on Monday morning, and while his hair was fair enough that it didn't show much, he was getting stubbly. "When are they expecting us?"
"Any time you can set up," Rhodey replied. "Fury made a big point about getting things done fast."
"Got it." Tony turned to Pepper. "Think you can get the teleconference set up while the rest of us go make ourselves presentable? We can't call the Air Force looking like a bunch of unwashed hippies."
"I had changes of clothes for everybody brought in already," Pepper replied, "I just didn't want to interrupt you while you were working. They're in a suitcase by the door," she pointed.
"What would I do without you?" asked Tony.
She shook her head. "And you wonder why I didn't leave when you told me to."
There were showers at Stark Industries, for people who had to go in and out of the clean labs. They weren't the most spacious or comfortable in the world, and the soaps and shampoos on hand were rather industrial, but Tony could deal. His capacity for putting up with a lack of luxuries had always surprised people, even before Afghanistan.
"Ladies first," he told Dido. "Try not to use up all the hot water."
While she showered, Jarvis sat in an armchair in the hallway with his arms folded and his eyes shut, apparently dozing. Tony decided that while he had a moment, he ought to have that talk with Rhodey. He found his friend back in Pepper's office, finishing up a phone call to the captain of the Van Buren.
Once Rhodey hung up, Tony pulled him aside. "Okay," he said, "I know you've got questions. Let me have 'em."
"Not so much questions," said Rhodey. "I wasn't sure I believed you at first but now that I've heard him talk, yeah, I'm convinced. I just... every so often I just realize how weird your life is, Tony. I don't know if I could handle something like that."
"I haven't been handling it as well as I thought I was, myself," Tony admitted, wincing.
Rhodey shook his head. "I mean, he's just... walking around like he's a real person."
"I know," said Tony. He took a deep breath. This was probably a bad time, but he needed to talk to somebody about this, and it couldn't be Pepper – he'd treated her like an accessory for most of the time he'd known her, too. "The worst part is, I'm starting to think he may have been a 'real person' for a while now, and I just never noticed."
Rhodey didn't answer. When Tony looked up, he found that for once the poker face had failed – Rhodey looked just as astonished by this idea as Tony himself had been when it first hit him.
"Come on, Rhodey," said Tony. "You've always been willing to call me on my shit. You don't have to tiptoe around this one. Dido says I treat people like lab equipment, so it shouldn't surprise anybody that I never realized when my lab equipment became a person."
"If it helps, I never thought of him as anything but a machine, either," Rhodey offered. "I remember Dido saying that. I was the one who told her that she should tell you to your face."
"You did?" asked Tony. If so, she'd never taken his advice. Tony had only heard the accusation second-hand, through Jarvis. "When was that?"
"Just before she left you," said Rhodey. "She was trying to get me into bed. She thought it'd piss you off."
Tony's eyebrows rose. "Did you?" he asked.
"Hell, no."
"Okay," said Tony. That was a bit of a relief, even if at this remove he wouldn't have been particularly angry about it anymore. He hesitated a moment, then decided it was time to spit out the other thing that was bugging them. "I think she might've slept with Jarvis, and when I asked, neither of them ever explicitly denied it."
Rhodey had no idea how to react to that – which it was hard to blame him for, since Tony didn't either. He finally managed, "and that bothers you."
"Yeah, it bothers me," said Tony. "If you think about it, he's technically only three days old!"
That wasn't really it, though. The real reason it bugged him was... well, it was exactly what Jarvis himself had said on Tuesday morning: Tony was jealous. Except he wasn't jealous because Dido was paying attention to Jarvis – Tony no longer cared who Dido Windham spent her time with. He was jealous because Jarvis was paying attention to Dido. If Jarvis were Tony's friend, he was one of the oldest and best. They'd been through all kinds of hell together, just the two of them, and the thought of Jarvis developing an emotional attachment to somebody else was more than Tony could take.
And that wasn't fair, was it? Because if Jarvis were a person, then who he got attached to wasn't up to Tony. If he were a person, then Tony couldn't own or claim him, no matter what sort of body he were occupying. Was that what Dr. Strange had wanted them to learn? If so, it was a hard lesson. Thinking about it made something in Tony's chest clench, forming a deep, dull ache just behind the arc reactor. Tony Stark wasn't good at sharing. He'd looked a god in the eye and told him, 'don't touch my stuff'. He'd stood in a courtroom and refused to give up the Iron Man suit even under threat of imprisonment. He didn't want to share Jarvis with anyone. The thought of sharing him with Dido Windham, of all people, was just insult on top of injury.
"Don't worry about it," Rhodey advised him. "Mr. Wizard will be back in a few days and everything will get back to normal, right?"
Tony shrugged. Since his little ephiphany yesterday afternoon, the return of Dr. Strange had ceased to be a comforting thought. He was pretty sure that the only way the whole mess could ever get back to what had once been 'normal' would be if Jarvis were left with no memory of the past few days – and for some reason that was horrifying. Besides, what was the point of giving somebody a 'learning experience' if you were just going to snatch it away again?
"Tony," said Rhodey, "it's obvious this is bugging you, and I get it, but you can't get distracted right now. We've got stuff to do."
Tony nodded.
There followed a slightly awkward moment in which Tony – and probably Rhodey, too – dwelled on the fact that men really weren't supposed to talk about their emotional issues. Fortunately, Pepper interrupted it by arriving with an electric shaver and a stick of deodorant she'd scrounged up somewhere, and Tony headed into the bathroom to deal with the very manly activity of cleaning up.
Dido and Jarvis had both finished in the shower right now: she was blow-drying her hair, and he was towelling off with one leg up on a bench. He didn't seem at all worried that Dido was still in the room, and it made Tony wonder, once again, whether she'd already seen it. He wasn't about to ask, though – he handed Jarvis the shaver and deodorant, told him to use them, and then took his own shower.
He got out to find that Pepper had, in her mysterious way, somehow procured a clean suit for Jarvis, too. It didn't fit him as well as the tailored one, but that didn't seem to make any difference to his comfort level – Tony was just going to have to accept that Jarvis wasn't meant to wear suits. He was now staring into the mirror, concentration evident on his face as he knotted his tie.
Tony went and picked up the shaver, then took another look at Jarvis and gave him a poke. "You missed a spot," he said. There was still quite a bit of ginger-blond stubble on Jarvis' chin and upper lip.
The two of them looked at each other in silence for a moment, and Tony suddenly realized that what he'd assumed was a botched shave had, in fact, been intentional.
"Nuh-uh," he said. "You don't have the right face for it." He pressed the shaver into Jarvis' hand.
After cleaning up, everybody met in one of the board rooms that was set up for teleconferencing. Jarvis transferred the data set he'd generated, and he and Tony kept interrupting each other as they made a point of the operation's narrow margins of error: a hundred yards in the wrong direction, or half a second too soon or too late, could ruin the whole thing with no second chance. The Captain of the Van Buren looked decidedly unimpressed by the plan, describing it at one point as 'stopping a bomb with another goddamn bomb', but he had his orders.
Jarvis patched a data feed from the aircraft carrier into his holographic map of the ocean floor, to show the locations of the ship and the planes that would be dropping off the explosive charges. Tony wasn't sure that was entirely legal, but he appreciated being able to watch, so he didn't comment on it. Once the planes were in the air, all anyone could do was wait and hope everything went according to plan.
While they waited, Tony toyed with ideas for things Jarvis might be able to do now. They could probably have him inspect the building's computer security, for one: he might be able to find weaknesses and loopholes that nobody else would even notice until it was too late, and fix them, too. Actually, he would still be able to do that even after Dr. Strange put him back in the house, but that sounded like... well, less fun, if nothing else.
The charges were dropped. The timers began to count down.
Finally, the moment arrived. When the first charge went off, the dot representing its location in the holographic map lit up red, then flashed several times as the explosives detonated in sequence, building up the wave as Huang's original blast had done. Jarvis was hunched over Pepper's laptop, watching the data come in. He didn't even look up as he announced, "on schedule."
The second charge went off ten minutes later, and the third another six minutes after that. And then... that was it. They were done.
"On schedule," Jarvis confirmed.
Tony allowed himself to breathe out – suddenly he was very, very tired. Pepper, sitting next to him, squeezed his hand. On the other side of the table, Rhodey and Agent Wheeler both let their straight-backed bearing sag a little, and Jarvis shut the laptop with a click and rubbed the corners of his eyes, obviously exhausted.
Dido had been up and pacing the room – Tony could remember her doing that during the brief period when they'd lived together, whenever she was worried about something, and it had been annoying then, too. Now she sat down and slumped forward, resting her head and arms on the table.
"Did it work?" she asked.
"If the calculations were correct," said Jarvis, copying her posture. Tony wondered if both of them intended to go to sleep right there.
"What if they're wrong?" Dido wanted to know. "What if somebody made a mistake somewhere? How will we know?"
"We'll find out between 12:12 and 12:17 PM," Jarvis replied.
Tony really couldn't help feeling as if the whole thing were a tremendous anticlimax. This was probably a side effect of his normal approach to problem-solving, which tended to involve blowing things up in a much more up-close-and-personal fashion. Watching dots appear in a hologram while a bunch of military personnel took care of the heavy lifting left Tony feeling a lack of closure. How could it really be over without the proverbial earth-shattering kaboom?
But as Jarvis had pointed out, the only thing they could really do now was sit and wait and hope for the best. As they left Stark Industries, the sun was rising over the mountains and the city was beginning to wake up. There was far less traffic on the streets than normal, but that was doubtless due to the official tsunami warning that had gone out over the radio and television. Agent Wheeler still wanted Tony and the others to leave the city, but the refused to go any further than back to the motel in Arcadia. Those with superhero credentials wanted to stay close to the coast, just in case.
Since Balthazar Windham had gone to Las Vegas, while Pepper was now with the others, there was some re-shuffling of sleeping arrangements. Clint, Natasha, and Steve took one room, while Tony, Pepper, Jarvis, and Dido got the other. This initially gave Tony a few concerns, but he quickly realized that nobody was going to be sharing a bed in anything but the most innocent sense. This time, it was Dido who flopped onto the bed with her clothes still on. Jarvis divested himself of jacket, tie, and shirt, and then for some reason lay down in the opposite direction, with his bare feet on the pillow and his head at the end of the bed.
Tony didn't wake him up to ask why – he just stripped down to his boxers and got into bed with Pepper, curling around her to press his face into her hair and breathe her in. She'd been using a citrus-scented shampoo, and the smell was warm, tangy, and comfortable.
"Too tired," she murmured, as he ran his fingers over the curve of her bare shoulder and down into the dip between her ribcage and hip.
"'Sokay," he replied sleepily. "Me, too. Love you, Pep."
"Love you, Tony," she said, lacing her fingers through his.
And that, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep, was what made the world worth the trouble of saving.