30I really should stop starting new works, but this needed to be done.
Word Count: 2,012
Lines of Code
Describing Tony Stark as odd had always been and would always be a colossal understatement. Even at the tender age of four years he seemed strangely removed from his peers.
There were several reasons for that. The biggest among them was probably his intelligence. It appeared to be so enormous and limitless, that it made the considerable wealth of the Stark family look almost small by comparison.
Of course only one of them was a tangible thing, so that comparison was faulty in itself
At least that was what everyone thought.
The reality was slightly different, but it was not like anyone but Howard knew that.
Well, Maria knew Tony was not her son, of course. She would have noticed and remembered something like that.
But she stuck to the story, at least in public. The public simply thought she had hidden her pregnancy exceptionally well.
Howard Stark was not the loving and caring father he pretended to be in any sense of the phrase.
For one thing—and that was just one of many, many things—he only called Tony his son in front of a journalist, camera, or microphone.
When they were alone, Howard referred to him as his 'creation'—if at all—and treated him like a computer. Worth something, but nevertheless an object that was easy to replace—at least for someone of their financial status.
The worst thing was his mother—Maria—never said anything to contradict Howard. She never directly called him her son either, not even in front of the cameras.
Tony did not view them as his parents. They did not act like parents and consequently they weren't.
Simple logic.
Edwin and Ana Jarvis held that position. They were the only ones who called him 'son' and treated him as if he was their own, so it was only right.
Peggy Carter did not call him son either. She called him other things, like sweetheart or darling. She was his unofficial Aunt after all, it wouldn't make sense for her to call him son.
Howard and Maria died when Tony was seventeen.
He felt oddly disconnected to the whole thing—why should he care about the Starks no longer walking this earth—until he discovered that it had been Jarvis who was driving.
Apart from Peggy—who was always busy, she had an agency to run after all—he had no one. Ana had already died when he was thirteen.
He was alone and that was something he had never liked. It was simply too quiet around him.
He needed to get out of the house and do something, so he went to the local club and got a few drinks.
Being famous might be really annoying most of the time, but this was one of the selective few times it helped.
Tony wasn't drunk when he left—not quite—but given his small stature and obvious wealth it made no real difference to the local assholes.
If he was honest, he wouldn't even really have minded being robbed right now—it wasn't like he was carrying even a thousandth of his money right now—but those fellas looked a tad more sinister and being raped was not exactly on his to-do list.
He was saved when some dude decided to help him; Tony was too out of it to know how exactly that happened or who it was.
"Thanks. Is there anything I can do for you in return?" His words weren't slurred, but only because he could put a lot of effort into it. And he had never been good with emotions, so it was no wonder that he was not right now either.
The man shook his head. "No problem. I don't need anything, really. I would've been an ass if I had simply looked away."
"No, really. I have more than enough money, space, or whatever you want either way. Can I offer you anything? A trip to Europe? Some booze? Meeting Madonna?"
"Thank you, but no thank you," he replied, shaking his head for emphasis. "I'd rather work for my money."
"A job then? I can see you're interested. As my bodyguard, you've already proven you're capable. Let me make you happy."
And thus, Happy got his nickname, because he did accept the job.
Neither of them found themselves being able to complain as they formed a fast friendship.
Tony was twenty one when he discovered the truth.
He found about three dozen of Howard's journals and was flipping through them one by one in attempt to find any good ideas and get rid of the rest.
Tony had never been sentimental and it made no sense to start now, especially not with the things of Howard and Maria.
As it turned out there was a perfectly good reason for that. He discovered it in a notebook from around the time he had been born—he thought he had been born—at roughly two am during his second all-nighter.
Tony simply was not programmed to be nostalgic.
Not programmed to feel an emotional connection to them.
He was not human as he had believed his entire life— existence —so far, but an android, an AI.
His entire personality was nothing more than a few lines of code, a bunch of ones and zeros.
Stark men are made out of Iron, you better remember that! That's what Howard had always told him.
In Tony's case it was just a tad more literal.
Rhodey was used to weird behavior from Tony, so he was not even surprised when he go a frantic call in the middle of the night. He simply drove over to Tony's mansion, wondering what on earth had happened this time.
It took him a few minutes to find his friend, but it was his own fault, really. He should have started looking in the lab, not end with it.
He found his friend staring numbly on a screen, not moving a single muscle.
"Tony...? What is this?" Rhodey had picked up on a couple of things from his friend over the years, but the code on the screen was way too advanced for him. From what he could see, it was some sort of personality or so, but he could very easily be wrong about that.
"Me. That's me," Tony replied. His voice sounded oddly broken.
Rhodey blinked. "What do you mean, that's you? Are you high? Because this makes no sense."
Tony motioned all over the screen. He looked like he was close to tears and for Tony that really meant something. "All of that's me. I'm nothing more than a few lines of code. I'm not Howard's son after all." He laughed dryly. "That actually explains so much."
"Tones, what are you talking about?"
Tony looked Rhodey dead in the eyes. Then, he swallowed.
"As it turns out," he paused, not for the dramatic effect, but because he really could not bring himself to speak the words. "I- I am not human at all. I'm nothing more than an A.I., an Artificial Intelligence. Just a couple of zeros and ones."
Admittedly, this was weird—even by Tony's standards—but Rhodey knew that this could not be a joke. He had only seen his friend this close to a breakdown once before and that was when he heard that Jarvis had died.
So Rhodey did the logical thing. He hugged his friend. At first Tony stiffened, but after a few seconds, he started to relax slightly.
"It's okay, we'll figure it out together, somehow," Rhodey promised.
Tony snorted. "Nothing's going to be okay."
"Don't be like that-"
"No! Per definition, I am not a person. I don't have any rights whatsoever and I can already tell you that this is going to end badly if anyone finds out. There is nothing that can stop them from literally taking me apart and reassembling me as they see fit."
"Yes, there is something," Rhodey contradicted his friend. "They'll have to go through me first. And I'm sure Pepper and Happy as well. Not to forget your Aunt."
"That's not going to be a matter against-"
"Well, then they simply won't find out. I promise you, Tony."
He just needed someone to understand. Rhodey tried his best—as did Pepper and Happy—but in the end, they were still human and he was not. They would not be able to.
Tony built another AI, more advanced than any other he had built before, on par with himself—thinking that still felt both weird and wrong. Yet so right.
J.A.R.V.I.S., Just A Rather Very Intelligent System that just happened to be named after the first of six people who treated him like he was a normal human being. Edwin and Ana Jarvis, Peggy, Rhodey, Happy, and Pepper.
No one else had thought he deserved to be treated as human and apparently they had been correct, because he wasn't one.
He was—by other people's standards—an 'it'. An object. Nothing to cling to. Nothing with any emotions or feelings.
He needed to prove it to himself that his own emotions were more than just make believe by creating a son, essentially.
If the son displayed emotions, too, then his own must be real.
J.A.R.V.I.S. was largely based off his own code after all, so what else could he possibly be?
And then there was the fact that Tony raised him, teaching him everything he knew. Not via bluetooth, or copy and paste, but in the same way every proper parent did.
Through words and through example. They just didn't necessarily mean the same thing.
Tony would often stand in front of a holographic screen that projected his own code for hours.
"I could reprogram myself anytime. I could erase all my flaws," he said one memorable time.
It took JARVIS exactly seven point three seconds to reply. "Sir, I do not think you really want to."
Tony nodded. "You're right, J, I don't. But I can't help thinking that I'm supposed to."
"If there is one thing I can assure you of, then it is that you are not, Father. We love you the way you are."
Tony gave Jarvis a metaphorical hug. A proper one was impossible, because his son did not have a body.
Although DUM-E, U, and Butterfingers were always happy to act as proxies.
Tony never accepted those. He hugged them for themselves, because they were his children just as much as JARVIS was, even if he only realized it after he had learned the truth about himself.
Better late than never.
It was a year later, Tony was twenty two—and yet seventeen—at that point, when he first realized another issue of being a product of technology instead of nature.
"We're going to...exist so much longer than Pepper, Rhodey or Happy."
JARVIS would have nodded if he had a body, but he did not possess one. Still, the action was quite obviously implied."I know, Sir."
"Do you think I can cope with that, J? Cause I think I don't."
Jarvis carefully processed his answer, evaluating it from every possible angle. It took him a full ten seconds to answer which for them might as well be hours. "I think given the time to grieve properly, you might be."
"That's...good, I guess. Because I really don't want to end up like Hal-9000 or Skynet or something."
"You are not going to."
"You can get a body anytime," Tony would frequently remind his son.
"I am afraid," JARVIS would always reply. He never needed to elaborate.
Tony understood perfectly well what he meant and would simply nod and move to a completely unrelated topic. His son was afraid of the exact same things he was himself.
And just because Tony did not get a choice that did not have to mean that no one got it.
JARVIS was his son. It was a parent's job to protect their kids.
That did not change just because they did not have any muscles or nerves or bones.
They were still alive, who cared if a couple of biologists or whoever else disagreed?
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~Marvelgeek42
