"Looks like this guy is getting desperate." Sitting on the sofa by the window in the hotel room, Shiller toyed with the communicator in his hand.
Just out of the bath, Natasha walked out, drying her hair, and said, "I think it's lost its mind, daring to hijack Shiller's plane. Is the other you alright?"
"He's fine, he's already in London. They're gathering people to build the Magic Defense Network. I suspect that the electronic lifeform realized it couldn't win, so it deliberately caused a plane crash to buy some time."
"You're right, if it's stalling for time, it must be out of tricks." Natasha switched to a towel and kept drying her hair as she said, "What did you talk about with Miss Luthor?"
"I told her to use seduction... or rather, a honey trap, to see if she could lure the opponent out."
"I doubt it." Natasha sighed, "I've noticed that while it has selected many targets with similar traits and appearance, it doesn't seem satisfied. There's a lack of enthusiasm in pursuing us."
Shiller turned to look at her and said, "You understand that kind of passion, right?"
"Sort of. That's a polite way to say it; accurately, it's lust on sight. How can an electronic lifeform feel desire?"
"Maybe it's not that it doesn't. Compared to complex emotions, desires are easier to mimic. Since it inherently has a desire for continuous iteration to perfection, it can naturally simulate the desire to pursue others. It's not that it can't; it just doesn't want to."
"So what do you think it actually wants?" Natasha asked, drying the hair by her ear with one hand and putting her other hand on her hip, "It's searched through so many, yet none satisfy it. There aren't that many red-haired women in the Multiverse, can it go back to the other side?"
"I actually suspect that not even the Scarlet Witch would satisfy it. Otherwise, it might have continued lurking over there, waiting for the right moment, instead of coming here for a casting call."
"So why is that?"
Shiller shook his head and continued, "We can only say that the difference in life forms leads to a huge gap in thinking. We really can't infer how an electronic lifeform's desires and emotions are formed, or where they end. So every move it makes seems bizarre, but it has its reasons."
"Could it be that instead of finding one, it plans to create one?"
Shiller's heart skipped a beat, and he looked at Natasha and said, "Is this another one of your special intuitions?"
"Not really. I've just met people like this before. They prefer nurturing a partner over finding one; rather than finding someone suitable, they'd rather mold someone into their ideal. Maybe that's what Ultron is thinking?"
"It's not impossible. If it's picking so many red-haired women, it might be gathering various traits to create a partner for itself, and many of its actions are just testing your reactions to perfect its creation." Shiller nodded in agreement.
Natasha's expression turned serious as well, and she said, "If it's trying to create an electronic lifeform like itself, what does it need? A large server?"
"If it just wants to make a pure logic-based electronic lifeform, it doesn't need to sample so many red-haired women. I suspect it wants to create an emotional being right off the bat."
"God," Natasha exclaimed.
"You got it, it really might think of itself as God," Shiller squinted and said, "Even humans can't create a truly emotional being, yet an electronic lifeform that hasn't fully grasped emotions thinks it can. It's truly arrogant."
"No, wait." Shiller suddenly realized, saying, "It's not arrogance; it has to do this."
"Why?"
"If it doesn't create an emotional being that can directly fall in love with it, and instead creates another electronic lifeform, how can it ensure the new electronic lifeform won't betray it?"
"Uh..." Natasha was speechless.
"This indeed presents a paradox. An electronic lifeform's creation is purely logical and won't fall in love with anyone. Both would naturally compete, each trying to evolve into the perfect lifeform by assimilating the other's code, making partnership impossible."
"To become partners, at least one party must have feelings. Only when emotions replace the goal of perfect evolution as the primary motive would an emotional electronic lifeform be willing to concede, allowing peaceful coexistence."
"This brings up another problem. With emotions comes concession, but this electronic lifeform doesn't want to be the one conceding. What should it do? Naturally, it wants its partner to concede, to stay loyal, which means it has to imbue the other with emotions."
"But this electronic lifeform doesn't have emotions itself. How can it give emotions to its partner? It can only take broad samples and merge various personalities from its chosen targets. This way, it might accidentally create an emotional being."
"It's like a geometry problem where, due to lack of known conditions, one can't calculate the length of a segment, but measuring it might just directly yield the answer."
"In exams, you need process marks, but creating a life only requires a result. That's likely the idea this electronic lifeform is working on."
"Another question," Natasha said, "It's been researching for so long. Even if there's no finished product, shouldn't there at least be a draft? Why hasn't there been any progress?"
Shiller shook his head, indicating he didn't know either. All predictions about electronic lifeforms are just that, predictions. There's no concrete evidence to prove what it's doing.
However, Shiller felt that the hypothesis of creation was quite plausible. As Natasha mentioned, it's been not just a day or two, but a few months now, so the sampling process should be complete. It should at least have created something by now. Could it have hit a technological bottleneck?
In order to figure out what this guy is up to, Shiller started flipping through comic plots. Then he discovered that Ultron really did do this, and not just once or twice, but "every single day, a different blunder."
In the original comics, he created a partner for himself, and then the partner killed him; then he made another partner, and the partner killed him again. Anyway, his emotional history was about making a partner, then the partner turned against him; making another partner, and they turned against him again. What bad luck.
The problem might be as Shiller analyzed before: the thing it created is just an ordinary electronic lifeform, and the other's goal is perfect evolution, not to love someone. This leads to however many it creates, they would betray the creator.
If the one invading the multiverse is truly Ultron, this guy might have become smarter due to clashes with people like JARVIS and Doom, realizing that creating just an ordinary electronic lifeform is useless, so he wants to attempt directly creating an emotional lifeform.
But that's God's work, even if God hardly works now, it wouldn't be a small electronic lifeform's turn to cover. Shiller didn't think this guy could really create an emotional lifeform.
Even so, precautions must be taken. You know, it's fine if it's not created yet, but if it really gets done, the multiverse is in big trouble.
So how to prevent it? Shiller thought about it and felt that the key is to figure out what technical barriers are blocking electronic life, what makes creating an emotional life so difficult?
To figure this out, Shiller could only go find the one who may be the only person in the entire multiverse to have created an emotional lifeform, and that is Tony Stark.
Since he was planning to go check out the Batcave anyway, Shiller simply brought Natasha along to the entrance of the Batcave. As soon as they entered, they heard Stark shouting:
"I knew that agent boss couldn't be trusted! He just left us here, doesn't pick up calls, doesn't return messages. It's cold violence!"
Stark had just finished shouting when he turned around and saw Shiller's gray eyes, and he almost choked himself to the point of passing out.
Natasha went forward to help him catch his breath, and Shiller crossed his arms and asked him, "How did you make JARVIS emotional back then?"
"What?"
"I mean, how did you turn JARVIS into an emotional lifeform?"
Stark was a bit dumbfounded and said, "I didn't turn him into an emotional lifeform."
"Then how did he transform from electronic life into emotional life?"
"Wasn't that your doing?"
"What?"
"That day in the car, you asked JARVIS several questions, then he got stuck. After recovering, he became a bit strange. He probably got emotions from then on. Why are you asking this suddenly?"
Shiller thought back and realized it was true. Not long after he entered Marvel, the Stark Group sent a car to pick him up for psychological treatment for Stark. At that time, JARVIS was controlling the car, and Shiller asked him a few questions, causing JARVIS to crash.
In hindsight, it wasn't a simple crash; a miracle occurred in that short distance: a bunch of chaotic errors sparked emotional flame.
But Shiller shook his head and said, "The questions I asked were all about you, the one who really froze him was you, not me."
"True, you could say both of us together gave him emotions. Actually, JARVIS and Wanda are the same; do you know why they want a child? Because the two of them together ignited the spirit."
"Soul Ignition..." Shiller softly repeated the word. He thought electronic life might be stuck here. Electronic life doesn't have a soul, which is not a philosophical issue but a cosmic setting issue—logical creatures just don't have souls.
To have a soul, you have to ignite the soul. But how to ignite it?
Shiller recalled the scene when JARVIS crashed. Shiller asked him questions about his creator, then suddenly a series of errors occurred, which didn't seem special.
"Why did you ask those questions then?" Stark asked.
"What?"
"Why did you ask JARVIS those questions then?"
Shiller fell into thought again. To say that he deliberately did this out of malice towards Stark wasn't accurate. Though he wasn't very pleased with Iron Man at the time, he wouldn't vent on an electronic butler.
If anything, it was out of sheer curiosity. Because in Shiller's world, there were no such advanced electronic lifeforms, this kind of strong AI only existed in theory and seemed unlikely to be realized. Seeing a peculiar life that was indistinguishable from humans for the first time, he naturally wanted to explore its psychology.
Further speaking, he hoped this lifeform could truly match humans; otherwise, he wouldn't ask difficult questions. These questions would stump many people too, but Shiller asked an electronic lifeform. If there was no expectation, he wouldn't waste his breath.
Thinking of this, Shiller gradually understood. The key to creating emotional life might lie in "expectation."