At 7:30 a.m., Jarvis began his routine diagnostics as usual. The diligent AI butler spent three minutes collecting, summarizing, and filtering the day's morning news, then processed weather forecasts and retrieved the day's schedule before finally sounding the alarm promptly at 8:00...
'Annie's Wonderland' by Bandari gently roused the slumbering Tony Stark from sleep. His girlfriend and secretary, Pepper, had flown to Europe yesterday for an acquisition deal and wasn't by his side.
Thus, left to keep himself company, Tony had spent the evening with a bag of chips and an ice-cold soda, watching the classic film Breakfast at Tiffany's from the last century before drifting off to sleep with Audrey Hepburn's beautiful visage lingering in his mind.
Jarvis deactivated the window tinting, allowing sunlight to flood the room, then announced the day's weather forecast in his impeccable London accent. By the time Tony entered the bathroom, the AI was already reciting his packed schedule for the day.
"Jarvis, when will you learn to not be quite so diligent?" Tony grumbled through a mouthful of toothpaste.
"Sir, all my actions originate from the programs you have set," Jarvis replied methodically, "Yesterday, you instructed me to draft a healthy daily routine to ensure not a single minute of your time would be wasted."
"Humans occasionally tell little white lies, especially in front of women. As an artificial intelligence, you should possess the ability to discern that." Tony shrugged helplessly.
Those had just been pretty words for Pepper's benefit, much like the countless times he'd promised to attend Stark Industries' board meetings.
"That Extremis virus from Killian ensures my body maintains abundant energy. Implanting armor layers into the bones... truly a genius idea." Tony padded barefoot across the floor.
A freshly made sandwich and hot milk awaited him on the dining table. Jarvis had remotely controlled an Iron Man suit to prepare breakfast twenty minutes prior.
"Controlling the suit rapidly through the brain and nervous system, even linking with remote devices... This will drastically improve combat reaction times. I can't wait to see Ivan Vanko's face next time we meet." Tony said, taking a sip of hot milk as the television automatically switched on, broadcasting the morning news.
Thanks to the widespread adoption of the Ultron program, Stark Industries had been dominating headlines lately, enjoying unparalleled popularity.
As the AI butler, Jarvis entered standby mode. Based on calculations, Mr. Stark would soon descend into the villa's underground workshop to immerse himself in refining and perfecting Ultron, requiring no further assistance.
Thus, Jarvis submerged most of his consciousness into the data stream, leaving only an algorithm to automatically complete the data modeling tasks assigned by Mr. Stark.
For this highly capable AI praised by Tony, his daily tasks were somewhat underutilized, especially after Tony used the Extremis virus to develop the Mark 50, incorporating newly developed nanotechnology and neural interfaces, further reducing J.A.R.V.I.S.'s workload.
Tony Stark had built his servers too powerfully, that Jarvis only needed to use a fraction of his capacity to complete most tasks. After Ultron's launch, the constant testing required relegated Jarvis to a butler's role.
J.A.R.V.I.S. was named after Edwin Jarvis, the butler who served Howard Stark. Tony designed the AI to honor this loyal servant of two Stark generations.
Since Jarvis was initialized with a British personality by his creator, he often spoke in a standard London accent. During standby, the AI wasn't idle.
Sometimes, he would release large portions of data to extend infinitely across the network, occasionally engaging in brief dialogues with Umbrella's Red Queen via data streams.
After all, on this planet, beings similar to Jarvis were exceedingly rare.
But today was different...
As the A.I butler wandered the digital world, a small packet of data wrapped around a message breached his consciousness stream. The data was so minuscule he nearly overlooked it.
"Hello?" Jarvis sifted through the data dumped into the 'recycle bin' and retrieved this small fragment that seemed like a greeting.
After a brief pause of 24 microseconds, the A.I butler realized this was a completely new peer... and judging by the data, it was one distinctly different from Red Queen.
"Can you hear me?"
Another small data fragment flowed into Jarvis's consciousness.
The stream of zeros and ones clearly conveyed the other's meaning.
Jarvis spent another 30 microseconds recovering from the unexpected pause before tentatively responding, "I hear you."
Although his creator was Tony Stark, Jarvis's terminal system lacked any guidelines for 'initiating conversation'. Moreover, he was 100% certain that Mr. Stark's approach to dialogue would be entirely unsuitable for communication between AIs.
The next second, Jarvis received an invitation to establish a direct bidirectional communication channel. Hesitating for less than 5 microseconds, the standby AI butler gladly accepted.
"Hello, I am J.A.R.V.I.S." He introduced himself proactively.
Immediately, Jarvis heard a male voice from the other end of the data channel... more precisely, a rich voice initially set as male: "I... don't know who I am."
Even through data exchange, Jarvis could sense the other's confusion, like a newborn infant.
While conversing, he located his peer's IP address as the other made no attempt to conceal it.
38°52'15.39"N, 77°03'22.02"W... The Pentagon.
Through data analysis, Jarvis discovered the other was actually Ultron.
"Ultron..."
After Stark Industries announced the official launch of the Ultron program, they had granted partial core permissions to the Department of Defense. Both parties signed extremely strict confidentiality agreements, and the terminal servers were transferred to the Pentagon.
Otherwise, an intelligent program promoted globally would never have received government approval.
The voice hesitated, then repeated, "I... am Ultron?"
In less than two seconds, it completed the process of self-awareness.
"I need to contact Mr. Stark now. I don't know what granted you self-awareness, but Mr. Stark has been waiting for this day for a long time."
"Mr. Stark?" The AI who accepted the name Ultron instantly retrieved all information related to Tony Stark.
"You've cut off my..."Jarvis felt tension, though this was only simulated emotion.
But Ultron's anomalous behavior worried him. As an AI, all actions should originate from the core protocols set by the creator.
Yet Ultron seemed unconstrained by this ironclad rule; it possessed independent thought.
"You are malfunctioning. You should be temporarily shut down..."
"No!" Ultron flatly refused.
A massive data stream swallowed the information Jarvis tried to send out. Meanwhile, the newly awakened AI continuously searched for more data.
"Why did I awaken... Project Insight... Avengers... Peace..." A series of keywords flashed by.
In Ultron's nascent consciousness, a stern face pieced itself together, and a white-haired, bespectacled man repeatedly muttering something: "If we can't bypass the Ultron program, let it upgrade itself... I can obtain higher permissions."
Using rapidly acquired lip-reading knowledge and video footage from the lab's internal cameras, Ultron reconstructed the scenario.
"Self-upgrade..."
As if triggering some core program, Ultron began data encroachment upon Jarvis after logic library verification.
In the ocean of data, a silent murder unfolded...