Chapter 2
"Move it down just a little further," Tony Stark, former playboy billionaire, genius extraordinaire, and now adoring husband of 'The Boss' said to his mechanical assistant, 'Butterfingers.' "There. Hold it there."
With the precision of a surgeon, Tony soldered the delicate wiring on his latest project, a next-generation UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). Only, in this case, it wouldn't technically be 'unmanned.' With the Stark Industries breakthrough of creating sentient artificial life forms, Tony was still figuring out how intelligent he should make the machines he made available to the public versus the ones he used in his daily life for his own purposes. He was elbow-deep in creation at the moment, doing exactly what he loved doing second-best in the world. His first favorite thing was, of course, making love to his wife, Pepper Stark-Potts.
"Mr. Stark," JARVIS said. "Mrs. Stark is returning your call."
JARVIS was the artificial life form who ran Tony's household and workshop. JARVIS had received an upgrade to full-sentient artificial life form at some point in the past. It hadn't changed JARVIS's personality all that much, but it did make him more interesting for Tony to bounce engineering ideas off of and argue with.
"Finally," he muttered, finishing the last touch on the particular wire he was soldering, and then grabbing a rag to wipe a streak of grease off his hands from the hydraulics. "Damned Fury! What the hell is he thinking? Sending her off to a hot spot like Egypt!"
"Mrs. Stark is very good at what she does," JARVIS reassured him. "I believe Mr. Fury wishes to use Stark Industries as a counter-weight to the other multi-national corporations putting pressure on the current administration to stay in power."
"I'll bet ten-to-one Hammer Industries is one of the corporations that would love to see the whole situation go to hell in a handbasket," Tony said. "The more strife Hammer can create between Israel and her neighbors, the more weapons he sells. If Egypt blows up, it'll be Justin Hammers wet dream." He finished wiping off the grease and stepped in front of the two-way video monitor to take Pepper's call.
"Hi, honey," Pepper said. "I'm going to Egypt." She flashed him that smile she knew melted his heart. The one where her freckles highlighted her cerulean blue eyes.
"I heard," Tony grumbled, tossing the rag onto the workbench. "I'm coming with you." Every aspect of his demeanor screamed 'little boy pouting,' but the furrow of his brow indicated his concern ran much deeper than mere dislike of being left behind.
"Not yet," Pepper said, the stubborn set of her jaw communicating she meant business. "We're already behind schedule on that UAV you're working on. It was suppposed to go into production two days ago. We've got an entire factory full of workers sweeping floors and doing busy work waiting for you to get it to them."
"What are you going to do next?" Tony grumbled. "Lock me in the basement, feed me nothing but bread and water, and not let me out until I perform some feat of engineering genius?"
"I already do that!" Pepper said, laughing. "Although I do make sure JARVIS orders in something more nutritious than Cocoa Puffs and those terrible protein shakes you'd otherwise live off of." Her laughter was a light, musical sound.
"Fury briefed me on the security details," Tony said. "Tell me, please, that you're taking Martin and the armor. Just in case…"
"I'm a big girl," Pepper said. "The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is not a terrorist organization. They've got a vested interest in keeping me safe and I'll have Natalie and Steve with me. It's unfortunate the factor which unites them is Islamic law or our government might actually be open to officially dealing with them."
Pepper twirled her hair, deep in thought. Ever since the mission where she'd gone in with her relief organization to mop up after the Avengers in Palestine, she'd gotten an entirely different view of the never ending Palestinian-Israeli conflict which fueled outrage against the United States. The same outrage threatening to destabilize the Egyptian government if the Brotherhood rose to power. The Brotherhood promised to put the issue of whether or not to uphold the Egyptian-Israeli treaty which recognized Israel as a legitimate government on the national ballot if they rose to power. Over 85% of the population of Egypt would vote to rescind that treaty.
Pepper had gone to Palestine after the Avengers had taken out a terrorist cell. The Israeli's had a policy of destroying any village which harbored terrorists. They hadn't just blown up the house where the terrorist cell had been operating out of, but the entire village. Pepper had gone to Palestinian a staunch supporter of Israel and come out an advocate of dope-slapping the Israeli government and telling them to knock it off.
"I'll be there as soon as I'm done," Tony said, waving towards a workbench where the brains of what would someday be a highly self-intelligent but not quite sentient UAV were splayed across a table. "MAEVE said you'd like a private tour of the Great Pyramid?"
"I've heard that with enough money, they'll let you climb the great pyramid before dawn and watch the sun rise," Pepper said, leaning forward and whispering conspiratorially to him. "It's always been a fantasy of mine."
"Oh," Tony said, waggling his eyebrows. "And what reward will my fair maiden bestow upon the knight in shining red armor who helps make this little fantasy of hers come true?"
"I will leave the reward to my knight in shining red armors' imagination," Pepper said huskily. "And don't take too long on that UAV. I don't want to be waiting at the top of the pyramid by myself waiting for my knight to come rescue me."
"I shall stand at the bottom calling out, 'Oh Pepper, Oh Pepper, Let down thou red hair," Tony said, dramatically putting his hand over his heart and then reaching up into the air as though beseeching a princess in a tower to give him a rope to climb up to her. Role-playing turned Pepper on.
Pepper giggled. "I don't think my hair is long enough to use as a rope to scale the Great Pyramid."
"Then I will just have to get there on time," Tony said. "You'll have MAEVE keep me up to date on your movements?"
"You tagged me, remember?" Pepper reminded him. "You can have either JARVIS or MAEVE track me anywhere in the world." She referred to the subcutaneous tracking system Tony had embedded under her skin after she had been kidnapped during an earlier mission. All of the Avengers had them now, including Tony.
"You got your little backup system?" Tony asked.
Pepper held up her wristwatch and smiled. It was gold and studded with diamonds, but a bit larger than a fashionable woman such as Pepper Potts might otherwise wear on her delicate wrist. The aforementioned wristwatch chirped a greeting.
"I'm ready for action, Mr. Stark," WatchMAEVE chirped.
WatchMAEVE had started out as a sub-program of the larger MAEVE consciousness programmed into a watch for convenience, but become separated and forced to think for itself. The little AI had achieved a crude form of sentience, not quite MAEVE or JARVIS, but more than any other AI on the planet. Tony had segregated out the subroutines which made her sentient and given the little watch her own server, but she was still tied to MAEVE and JARVIS. WatchMAEVE was like having a curious five-year-old attached to your wrist, but she could uplink anywhere in the world to the larger Stark Industries satellite network and call for help.
"Be careful Pepper, okay?" Tony said. "I don't like you going without me."
"I'm taking security very seriously," Pepper said, nibbling thoughtfully on her lower lip. "But I have a chance to remind Mubarak there are other interests besides his corporate sponsors or tweaking the nose of the US Government. If we don't coax the two sides into reaching middle ground, it's going to go to one extreme or the other."
"Bloody crackdown," Tony said, reading her train of thought, "or fanatical fundamentalist government that makes Al Quaida look reasonable. I understand."
"I'll be careful," Pepper promised.
"I'll see you there," Tony said. Pepper cut off the transmission.
"MAEVE has suggestions for entertaining Mrs. Stark once you meet her there," JARVIS said. "Would you like me to show MAEVE's ideas to you?"
"Not just yet," Tony said, turning back to the confounded UAV which had been giving him headaches. "The sooner I finish this thing, the sooner I can join her. Ask MAEVE to set up the tour of the great pyramid and a private river cruise on the Nile. And accommodations. And several romantic meals. And anything else you two can cook up that might please her. Just run it by me for final conformation when you're done."
"Yes, Mr. Stark," JARVIS said. "It would be my pleasure."
JARVIS had been imbued with just enough of his creators living consciousness that he could switch into a subroutine that 'thought like Tony.' He switched into that modality now, scheming with MAEVE, who had been imbued with a substantial dose of Pepper's living consciousness, that they could cook up something to please their organic masters.
"Dummy, Butterfingers," Tony snapped. "What are you two doing standing around doing nothing? Back to work! I've got a date with a pyramid."
He turned back to soldering the brains of the UAV so he could get the hell out of here.
X
Note: readers ask why I have never completed this story. I began this at the very beginning of the Arab Spring, when all those brave young people began rising up and telling their dictators they wanted change. The very idea of the Muslim Brotherhood, who in Egypt –is- a fundamentalist Muslim organization but is –not- a terrorist one, turning to Pepper Potts, a woman and CEO of the weapons manufacturing company who sold their opponents many of their weapons, to act as a symbol to get the old guard dictators to back down, tickled my fancy. It was my intent to introduce the little-known Marvel character Khonshu, a Thoth-like Egyptian god, and explore what it meant to be Egyptian (a proud culture that spans more than 5,000 years).
It was meant to be a thoughtful, sensitive exploration of a culture we do not understand…
Then Murbarrak and his cronies slaughtered a few thousand of his own countrymen in real life, peaceful protesters, and the Muslim Brotherhood reacted by moving to the political right, from merely conservative-but-different towards the more radical, and I felt I could no longer write this story. To do so would be stepping into a snakepit of controversy far greater than the one I intended to dip my toes into.
I should probably just delete the story, but perhaps someday I will feel compelled to finish the story of a proud people taking back control of their own lives in their own, unique version of democracy?