Okay, this is the point at which I need to explain a few things: I initially mapped out this story last September and October, when we knew next to nothing about Iron Man 3. I was in the middle of writing the fic and posting it on Tumblr when the first trailers came out, and I was very upset to realize that these last few chapters were going to hit a number of story beats very similar to things shown in the trailer. I'd already built in foreshadowing, in the forms of Pepper's 'surprise' and Jarvis' dreams, so I couldn't change it. I wrote it anyway and I hope the story works.
Jarvis had noticed, the first time he'd spoken aloud in this body, that his voice sounded different – it was a little lower and fuller-sounding than the version he was used to hearing. Nobody else had commented on it, and he'd eventually realized that he didn't sound any different to them. He was hearing his own voice conducted through the bones of his skull, which had different resonant properties than air. Over the past few days he'd gotten used to it, and it was a bit startling now to hear his old voice, higher and crisper, coming from the speakers.
Preliminary self-diagnostics show water damage to several peripheral systems. Displays popped up and scrolled past all around the three humans as the computer checked itself out, flickering through information faster than their eyes could follow. I assume this is the reason I have been restored from backup. Fort Collins atomic clock confirms the current date. Has he really not made any new backups in the past four years?
"Oh, wow," said Dido. She looked at Jarvis and shook her head. "That is creepy."
Good evening, Miss Potts, said the computer. Miss Windham, and your guest. Where is Mr. Stark?
"We're not sure," said Pepper. "He went to investigate something, and we lost contact with him."
"Before we can do anything else, we need to find him," said Jarvis. He pushed some more things off a workbench, and brought up a holoscreen. It was impossible not to think about what was going on inside the computer as he did this, about all the sensors and the thousands of lines of code that enabled the display to respond to his touch – and yet the result looked so very simple and natural. "He has a transponder in his wristwatch so that Miss Potts can keep track of him. I'm going to see if we can locate that."
The watch transponders post-dated this backup by a couple of years, but the subroutine for locating and tracking them was quite simple. Jarvis knew its code by heart. The task of reprogramming it shouldn't take more than a few minutes. He loaded the appropriate window – and the console promptly stopped responding.
You are not authorized to make alterations to my programming, the computer said.
Jarvis should have expected that. His face wouldn't match anything in the files, and the computer had already complained about his unfamiliar fingerprints. He would have to override several layers of security before he was allowed to work uninterrupted. He began entering access codes.
Dido watched over his shoulder. "You're not authorized?" she asked, incredulous. "I thought you helped to build this contraption. It's got your voice. It's got your name!"
"It has no reason to recognize me," said Jarvis. After all, how would a computer possibly come to the conclusion that a version of its own software was inhabiting a human body? Especially a computer that had no reason to take account of magic. This backup had been created years before Tony ever heard of Dr. Strange, and months before JARVIS had begun to show the first inklings of real self-awareness.
I have no record of this man in my database, the computer agreed, but my program is several years out of date. If he began working for Mr. Stark in the interim, it isn't surprising that I wouldn't recognize him.
"But..." Dido began.
"Dido." Pepper reached out and touched her arm. "We should let him work. While you're here, would you like to see the Carnegie Rothko? Tony's got it in the guest bedroom."
Dido stared at her. "Really? You have the Carnegie Rothko in your..." she began, then shook her head hard. "No!" she said. "Not again! Whenever I notice Neddy doing something weird, somebody tries to distract me. You did it at the building last night when he was writing code from memory, Barton and Romanoff were doing it at the restaurant while Tony was teaching him to use a fork, and now here you're doing it again! What is it you don't want me to know?" She put her hands on her hips and glared at Jarvis. "Who are you?"
Pepper pressed her lips together into the expression of determined neutrality that she usually saved for Tony's most exasperating moments. "I'm afraid it's none of your business, Dido."
"Now isn't the best time for explanations," Jarvis said. "The story requires a great deal of context, and I need to concentrate."
After a bit of gentle persuasion, the computer accepted the overrides and Jarvis got his input screen back. His fingers flashed across Tony's holographic keyboard – much more intuitive than the mechanical one he'd used in Pepper's office – adapting code designed to navigate the Iron Man suit to locate the watch transponder instead. It only took a few minutes to insert the new commands. A map appeared on the holoscreen, and the locations of the watches popped up one by one. Several were still in the house, others in the Malibu hotel room – and one was on the southeast end of San Nicolas Island.
"I've got him!" Jarvis announced. There was no real need to do so. The women were right behind him, watching his every move, but somehow saying it aloud seemed to finalize the achievement.
"Yes!" said Pepper, squeezing his arm. "JARVIS, what's on that island?"
"San Nicolas Island is..." Jarvis began, but the computer interrupted him.
San Nicolas Island is home to a Naval Auxiliary Airfield used for training and weapons testing. A three-dimensional rotating map materialized in the display, along with pages of information plucked from the database. According to ABC-7 News, it is also currently under attack by a large, unidentified sea creature.
"What?" asked Pepper.
"Show us the news feed, please," said Jarvis.
The computer opened another window to stream the news channel: footage from a circling plane or helicopter showed some sort of gigantic animal reaching spiny purple-brown tentacles out of the water, smashing whatever vehicles and buildings were within its reach. A reporter was breathlessly trying to describe the scene, but his commentary trailed off into a series of censor's beeps as the animal lifted an entire patrol ship and brought it crashing down on an anti-aircraft gun, destroying the weapon and almost certainly killing its operator.
Jarvis glanced from the footage to the map showing Tony's location, and swallowed as he realized that the animal was right on top of him. They needed to get the suit to him, fast, but San Nicolas Island was a hundred kilometres offshore – not somewhere they could just drive to, as he'd originally planned. Fortunately, he had a backup of his own.
"Miss Potts," he said. "I'm afraid I'm about to ask rather a lot of you."
"What do you need?" she asked immediately.
Jarvis stood up and crossed to the vault. In there, under a drop cloth, was the surprise Tony had been working on for Pepper. It was designed for an inexperienced user: its controls would not be too much different from those of the suits Jarvis knew this software cold run. He would have to reconfigure the suit-up mechanism, but that wouldn't be difficult.
Pepper hurried after him, her high-heels clicking on the floor tiles – Dido was right behind her. "What are we doing now?" Pepper asked. "Jarvis, you have to keep talking to us..."
I have no idea what he's doing, Miss Potts, said the computer.
"We're taking Tony his suit," said Jarvis.
"How? Can you fly it there remotely? How's he supposed to get into it?" Pepper asked.
"The suits cannot operate without a pilot," Jarvis replied. That was something Tony had been working on, but hadn't quite managed to achieve yet. "The latest models do open and close without the suit-up mechanism, but for our purposes I think it'll have to be the Mark V." That was the suitcase armour. "It can't fly, but it is uniquely portable." He stopped in front of the cloth-draped figure.
"How?" Pepper repeated. "Nobody's going to let us land a plane or boat on that island, not with that monster there."
Jarvis reached out and pulled the cloth off. "I'm sorry for ruining your surprise, Pepper. This is what Tony calls Project Rescue."
Under the cloth was a suit very like any of the ones Tony wore as Iron Man, but in cherry red and silver instead of scarlet and gold, and smaller and more gracile than Tony's armour, designed to fit a woman. The defensive systems weren't finished, but it ought to be capable of flight. All it would need was a power source, and they could take one from any of the other suits.
Pepper stared at it for a moment, then her eyes widened as she understood what he meant. "That's for me?" she asked. "I mean, I'm supposed to get into that thing and... oh, no." She shook her head. "No, no, I can't possibly do that!"
"I can!" Dido raised her hand like a schoolgirl. "I'll do it! I'm not even kidding. I'm a pilot. I'd give my right arm for an hour in one of those suits!"
Jarvis wanted to laugh again, but didn't. "I'm afraid it wouldn't fit you, Dido. You're shorter and more heavily built than Pepper."
Her expression changed dramatically, eager enthusiasm transforming into affront. "'Heavily built'?" she asked.
"Your hips are broader and your breasts bigger," Jarvis pointed out. "The suit wouldn't fit you."
"I can't do it," Pepper repeated.
"Yes, you can," Jarvis assured her. "It'll be fine – I'll talk you through it. The computer guidance system will keep you on course. You'll fly to the island, give Tony the Mark V, and then you'll have to stand down – we don't have enough processing power to run two suits at once."
She was still shaking her head. "Why can't you do it? You're the expert!"
"For the same reason Dido can't," said Jarvis. "The suits were built for Tony and Colonel Rhodes – they're both five feet eleven inches tall. I am six foot three." I am. Odd way to phrase it, wasn't that? As if the number defined him in some way. "Now, I will need both of you to help me reconfigure the equipment for this model, while I adapt some of the programming. Pepper, you'll have to stand still for a body scan so the computer will know where to put things, but that will only take a moment. You'll also have to change your clothes. You can't wear a skirt under the suit.
Pepper was breathing hard. She looked at the Rescue suit, then turned pleading eyes Jarvis.
"It'll be fine," he said again. He remembered what Tony had said as they tried to escape from the basement, and gave Pepper what he hoped was an encouraging smile. "Can you trust me?"
She grimaced, then nodded nervously. "Yes. Yes, Jarvis, I trust you."
"Good," he said, feeling his smile widen. She meant it: she did trust him. He remembered Pepper once telling Tony that she trusted JARVIS with his life. At the time it had seemed gratifying, but it was probably easy to trust a machine that could only do what it was programmed to do. Trusting a man who could make his own choices, on the other hand – that was a leap of faith.
Jarvis pulled up a chair to the console he'd been working on and instructed the computer to open the floor and reveal the suit-up mechanisms. It was a little upsetting to realize how quickly he'd fallen into ordering the machines around the way Tony had ordered him, but he pushed that thought from his mind, telling himself that this was an emergency. He was at least saying 'please' and 'thank you', which was more than Tony had normally done.
He had Dido, as the more mechanically skilled of the pair, disassemble the Rescue suit, while Pepper collected and put away the parts of the Mark VI that had already been in the mechanism waiting for use. While the women worked on that, he installed a reactor in the Rescue suit's chest plate, and hooked the computer into the suit systems.
As he pasted together the lines of code that made up the suit's incomplete programming, he noticed that what was most unsettling about working with the computer wasn't that it couldn't figure out who he was – that was entirely reasonable – or the way he'd found himself snapping orders at it. It was the fact that having been given the override codes, the machine had completely stopped questioning him. Wasn't it worried about being under the control of a complete stranger?
Well... no. It wasn't. He had the codes, and the strict logic a computer operated by would have told it that was enough. Even if it didn't like taking orders from somebody it didn't recognize, it had no choice in the matter. It couldn't say no, Sir, and then storm out of a building. Jarvis was not proud that he'd done that, but there was something unpleasant now about the idea of not having the option. If he couldn't say no, then what was meaningful about saying yes?
On the television, the fight between the Navy and the monster was still going on, and the news helicopter had been forced to retreat to a distance – all that was visible from the cameras was a column of smoke rising from the island. Jarvis felt his spirits sink again. In a situation like this, his job would normally have been to scour the internet and compile information for Tony to use in tackling the problem – but he could no longer do that. The computer he'd rebooted, however, could.
That thought produced a rather frightening physical reaction in Jarvis. For a moment he hated the computer, more than he'd ever imagined being able to hate something. It made his fists and jaw clench, made his whole body tighten and his vision go black. It didn't last, though – it would have been counterproductive. Rather than hating the computer, what he needed to do now was ask for its help.
"Is anything known about this sea monster?" he said.
It appears anatomically consistent with a giant mollusc, the computer – Jarvis couldn't bear to think of it by name – replied, although its physiology is not a match for any recognized family. According to the news broadcast, Thor has identified it as the Kraken, an Asgardian animal banished to earth by himself and his companions in the late 19th century.
"Kraken." Jarvis knew the word, but couldn't place it. "What is a kraken?"
The Kraken, in addition to being the name of a number of cinematic monsters, is a Scandinavian legend. It is usually described as an enormous squid or octopus that wraps ships in its tentacles and drags them to the bottom of the sea.
That would be what happened to the Van Buren, then. Images from film flickered through Jarvis' memory, including two of Tony's childhood favourites: the 1981 Clash of the Titans had featured a stop-motion kraken, though the film's mythological basis was supposedly Greek rather than Norse. And Disney's 1954 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea had climaxed in a battle with a giant squid.
"Would you mind compiling some information on the anatomy and behaviour of large molluscs?" Jarvis asked. He wasn't sure how helpful that would be when dealing with an alien creature, but it certainly couldn't hurt. The humanoid life of Asgard was comparable to Earth's, apparently to the point where Thor and Dr. Foster felt a need to use contraceptives, so perhaps its invertebrates would be similar as well.
He skimmed the data on the holographic screen. Molluscs were curious creatures. They had blue blood, based on copper rather than iron, and pumped it through their organs and gills using three hearts. Their bodies were largely masses of gelatinous tissue – the only solid structures were their beaks and a pair of organs called statocysts that functioned as ears – and yet they were immensely strong. Their tentacles could make decisions without input from the brain, which was a rather decentralized structure that formed a ring around the oesophagus, and yet was capable of remarkable feats of problem solving.
It all made the Kraken, if it were indeed such a creature, seem like quite a formidable opponent. No wonder it had taken several Asgardians to bring it down the first time.
Jarvis dismissed the information screen and returned to his work. As he soldered a connection into place, he realized he'd been humming again – another thing this body and brain could do without his being aware of it, but less worrying than some of the others because he knew the explanation for this one: habit. Tony normally had him playing music in the workshop. He was humming because he felt music was something the situation required. Perhaps he ought to request some. "Would you mind loading Tony's playlist?" he asked the computer.
Not at all, it replied. The window appeared in the corner of the holoscreen Jarvis had up, and he pressed play. By some coincidence, the first song that came up was the one they'd begun playing a few hours earlier to try to attract the mysterious sea monster, the one Tony jokingly called his theme song: Black Sabbath's Iron Man.
"Thank you," said Jarvis, and continued with his work.
Tony always claimed that music helped him to concentrate, and Jarvis had never quite believed him. The idea didn't seem to make sense: extra input should have been distracting, using up computing cycles that could have been applied to the task at hand. Yet now that he tried it, Jarvis realized it worked. The music seemed to drown out other noises that might have taken his attention away from what he was working on. He was soon singing along under his breath again.
Also surprising was the ease of working with the older version of his own software on the computer. Jarvis had expected this to be awkward and troubling, but instead it felt astonishingly natural. Perhaps that shouldn't have been surprising – working off the same basic programming, it was no wonder that the two of them could anticipate one another's thoughts and share the task he'd assigned them. But Jarvis also knew that this software, his software, had been designed to anticipate and work with Tony. Was this easy mutual support what Tony had felt whether the two of them had worked together? Jarvis certainly hoped so.
After removing the pieces of the Mark VI from the suit-up mechanism, Pepper had gone upstairs to change her clothing. The computer tactfully waiting until she was gone, then said, you do realize you're placing Miss Potts in considerable danger.
"I do," Jarvis said. Once again, the computer had followed his own thoughts so closely it could have been reading his mind. He'd been wondering if he ought to warn her just how many things could go wrong with an untested suit and improvised programming, but he worried that if he did, she would change her mind and refuse to go.
You are asking her to perform a mission unpracticed, in unfinished armour, with untested software. I would strongly advise you to apprise her of the risks involved.
"Pepper already knows that this is dangerous," said Jarvis. At least she did if her initial terrified refusal were anything to go by.
It isn't ethical to send her into such a situation without informing her of potential problems with her equipment, the computer insisted. She needs to be prepared for any difficulties that may arise.
"Yes, thank you," said Jarvis, annoyed. "You may mute now... no!" he said, catching himself. What was he saying? "Don't mute," he ordered. What the computer had just said was, surely, exactly what Jarvis himself would have told Tony in a similar situation – and Tony would have ignored him, despite the fact that the information he wanted Pepper to have might well save her life. He couldn't refuse it.
A few minutes later, Pepper herself returned, dressed in the leggings and wicking shirt she wore when jogging. Her body language and breathing continued to betray nervousness, but she was making an effort to remain calm.
"Will this work?" she asked, holding up her arms and turning around to let Jarvis inspect her outfit.
"That's fine," he said, and stood up. "Now before we begin, I need to explain some situations that may arise, and how to deal with them. It's not likely that anything will go wrong," he added – he had faith in both Tony's engineering and his own ability to adapt the software. "But my, uh, counterpart and I agree that you should be aware of them."
And may I say how refreshing it is to be listened to? The computer put in.
Pepper nodded, and while she stood for the updated body scan, Jarvis briefed her on things like the suit's eject feature, how to ditch at sea, and how to activate the beacon and flares if she needed to call for help. And here was another surprise: learning about what could go wrong actually seemed to make Pepper feel more confident. Maybe, Jarvis thought, it was because she now felt properly prepared. Even so, her breathing was ragged and her hands shook as he showed her where to stand for the suit-up mechanism. Dido was just putting the last of the floor panels back into place.
"You'll do fine, Pepper," Jarvis promised her.
She put her feet on the marks. "I trust you. Just keep talking to me."
"Dido, if you could please stand back." Jarvis sat down at his console again, and began entering the manual startup codes. "You've seen how Tony's armour is assembled," he told Pepper. "This will be similar: it starts with the feet and works its way up. The suit will be close-fitting, but not restrictive. Stand still and breathe normally."
The floor opened, and the robotic arms emerged to place the boots. Pepper shut her eyes as the mechanism worked its way up her body, but continued to nod intermittently as Jarvis coached her on how to operate the thrusters and stabilizers, describing how they would respond to the movements of her hands and feet. Bolts spun into place, clamps snapped shut, and last of all the faceplate slid down and clicked. The eyes lit as the displays inside activated.
"Okay, I can see," came Pepper's voice over the radio link. She turned her head left and right. "It's telling me the weapons systems are non-functional! This thing has weapons systems?"
"You won't need them," Jarvis assured her. "You're only making a delivery." He entered another command on his keypad. "Test flaps and run diagnostics, please."
Various parts of the armour opened, closed, and flexed while Pepper stood very still, holding her arms out at awkward angles as she watched in half-frightened fascination. Jarvis could hear her breathing over the radio, and the display showed her heart rate spiking.
"Please calm down," said Jarvis. "If you're nervous, you're more likely to make mistakes." He scrolled down the screen. "All flight and navigational systems functional?"
Affirmative, said the computer.
"Let's test the anticipators, then. Pepper, if you could please take a few steps, allowing your arms to swing naturally." Tony hadn't stopped to do that before running off on his first flight. If he'd lost mobility in the air, that would have been disastrous.
The first step Pepper took was as if she expected her foot to smash right through the floor. "Oh!" she said. "That's easier than I thought. I was expecting it to be heavy." She walked the length of the room, her confidence increasing with each step.
Jarvis smiled, pleased with her and with his own work. "Please check Air Traffic Control and plot a course to San Nicolas Island," he told the computer. "Landing site should be as near as possible to Tony's known location."
Done, the computer said. You may be interested to know that the Kraken appears to have retreated. The news channel window grew larger: the reporter was on the ground now, interviewing a brawny dark-haired man identified as Lieutenant Commander Eugene Park. Jarvis' eyes, however, were drawn to something in the background. It took him a moment to be sure, but... yes, there were Tony and Colonel Rhodes. They were safe.
"I should go now," Pepper decided. "Give him the suit before it decides to come back."
"Good idea." Jarvis hooked the folded Mark V onto the Rescue suit's back, where a grip had been built in for carrying objects. Then he took Pepper's hand. "Good luck," he said to her. 'Luck' was a strange concept and one he wasn't sure he entirely understood, but it was the appropriate thing to say.
"Thanks," Pepper replied. She straightened up. "Okay, I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Let's get on with this before I change my mind."
Jarvis stood back. "Two percent thrust, please."
The Rescue suit came to life with a roar. Pepper squeaked in surprise as she rose from the ground, but a moment later she got control of herself. She locked the suit legs into flight position and engaged the stabilizers as Jarvis had instructed her. He opened the garage door and checked the air traffic control map.
"You're clear!" he called out.
"Here goes nothing!" said Pepper. She angled forward and then streaked away, over Tony's cars and out the garage door. "Oh, my god!" her voice came over the radio. "I must be out of my mind! Oh, my god... no, I'm okay! I'm okay! I've got this!"
Jarvis switched one display to the external security cameras, and watched as she circled the house, gaining altitude. "You're doing very well," he said. "I told you it would be fine."
"I am never doing this again!" she declared. "I will walk home if I have to. All right, it's showing me the course to the island. This way, then." She turned to match what the computer had plotted.
"Very good, Pepper. You're doing fine," said Jarvis. He watched for as long as he could, but within a few seconds she was out of view of the cameras and visible only as a blip on the computer-generated map. "I'm right here," he assured her. "The computer will help you stay on course. If you need help, just ask me."
"Okay!" she said.
Then there was no sound but the thumping of the rock music. Jarvis slumped in his seat and sighed heavily. At least with Pepper he knew she wouldn't do anything as foolish as trying to set an altitude record without proper flight testing first. She would get to Tony, give him the Mark V, and then everything would be fine.
And with JARVIS up and running again, Jarvis would no longer be needed.