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Sometimes Tony wondered what it was that had possessed him to build robots with even primitive levels of AI.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time, he supposed, but he'd been young and not at all immune to a common feature of youth: Getting carried away with his own cleverness and not really thinking his ideas through.
Robots to help him in his workshops, robots which could also learn had seemed like an amazing idea, bolstered by the incentive to create something which no one had thought was even possible at the time. It hadn't occurred to him that his bots might learn bad habits. Let alone bad habits which weren't coming directly from him.
“Dum-E, I know it was you – no, not you, U – Dum-E. I need that spanner, bring it back.”
The bot sent back a little whistle, bouncing his claw in a teasing manner – but didn't turn around, let alone bring back the tool which he'd run off with.
“I don't know what's gotten into you lately, buddy, but you're really encouraging me to start digging through your code…”
The threat prompted a very sad sounding whine from Dum-E, his arm – and the tool he had run off with – dipping down as he slowed. He wouldn't have gotten much further, seeing how there was very little viable space left for him to flee to, but Tony felt a stab of guilt. He often threatened to donate his idiot bots, but he never really suggested meddling with their programming, in changing who they were.
He sighed when he got to Dum-E, who dropped the spanner back into his outstretched hand easily enough. He patted the arm reassuringly. “Don't worry. I won't actually dig into your code.”
The arm came back up slightly, the hand tilting inquisitively. Dum-E let out a soft squeak, as though asking if he were sure.
“Just… try and behave yourself, would you? We're working on a project, here. It's not time for games of keep away.”
The bot tilted his head again, the kind of motion he used whenever he was trying to communicate that he didn't quite understand what was going on. It was, more or less, his default expression.
“No taking things,” he said, holding up the spanner and hoping that was simple enough to understand.
If Dum-E hadn’t been a robot arm, Tony would have called the noise which came out of him a coo. He was tempted to do it anyway.
Dum-E followed him back to the worktable where the current project was laying – some fine tuning on one of the Iron Man gauntlets – without any complaining. After watching the bot for a while out of the corner of his eye, it seemed as though he were done with randomly stealing tools. Whatever it was which had gotten into Dum-E, at least it didn’t seem to be a glitch. Just another strange turn in the simple personalities which both of the arms had developed over time. Dum-E was just a little bit more of a troublemaker than U, it seemed. Or just wanted more attention, and didn’t care much how he was getting it.
Tony was focused enough on the project and on Dum-E that he didn’t notice when U rolled up close beside him. Not until the bot was rolling away again.
“U! Put the coffee cup down!”
—•—
He really had no idea what had gotten into the bots. They were always a pain from time to time, but they had really stepped up on the frequency which they decided to be pests. Normally it was restricted to only a few major incidents per day – things which were a little more severe than just dropping what they were carrying, or knocking something over in the lab which didn’t catch on fire. Now it was something more like a few dozen incidents a day. And from what he could tell, none of it was accidental, which was their normal way of getting into trouble.
And it was both of them, not just Dum-E who was the main culprit. U was getting into plenty of trouble as well. In fact he seemed to be reveling in it even more the Dum-E was, the little demon. Apparently whatever it was that had gotten into the two of them, it had U feeling as though he could cut loose – and he’d really been wanting to get up to mischief for a while.
As well as stealing his tools while he was in the process of using them, both of them had taken to hiding the damn things from him. They would find places to stash his tools so that Tony had to spend a good portion of his time tearing the shop apart just to find what he needed to work.
Then there was the coffee. They loved taking his coffee when he wasn’t looking, possibly because he was even more likely to chase them over the coffee than he was with any of the tools. He could figure his way around some of the tools, he couldn’t really function without the coffee – and he noticed its absence a lot faster.
He’d considered putting his drinks somewhere up high where the bots couldn’t reach, but that was easier said than done. They were designed to be able to at least reach, if not fully access all parts of the workshop. That was, more or less, the whole reason they were there. And anywhere which Tony could reach – without his Iron Man boots – the bots could definitely reach.
As annoying as that was, though, it wasn’t nearly so bad, in his opinion, as when they decided that he could keep his coffee, but it needed to be a lot sweeter.
The first time he’d taken a swig of his coffee without having to search for it, Tony had been too pleased that it had been right where he’d left it to check it. Or to notice that it had changed color.
He’d learned his lesson on the first incident, though. Somehow the bots had gotten a hold of enough sugar to make his mouth feel like it was on fire when he took a healthy pull.
He checked his coffee before drinking, now. Especially if it just so happened to be where it was supposed to be.
Though sometimes he didn’t need to check, per se. One time he’d come back into the shop after having to leave for a few minutes, and found his mug buried under a pile of sugar cubes.
It was all just so… not out of character for them, really, but still weird when it came to how the bots normally acted. They were a pain, sure, but they weren’t normally disobedient. He didn’t want to go digging through their coding, but they were starting to worry him. What if this really was a glitch somewhere, the first sign that there was something deeply wrong with them – the cough that hinted at tuberculosis?
He was still considering this, weighing up the pros and cons of going in and rooting through the AI coding, as well as the possible risk of modifying something so basic that the bots’ entire personalities would be altered, when he got a visitor in the shop.
“I’m not kidding, you two, I need my tablet back! I don’t feel like hunting through the entire workshop, so if you would please—“
“Ah. Good to see that you’re spending time playing with your children, Anthony.”
Tony pulled up short and looked back over his shoulder. Loki stood in the doorway of the shop, looking around with a faint smile and an air of pure amusement.
He could imagine why – it was absolute chaos in the shop just now. The bots has spent the entire morning hiding everything which they could get their claws on, including three cups of coffee – he’d gotten tired of trying to find them all, and had just gotten fresh cups over and over again – several tools, his jacket, and now his tablet. Everything else he could do without for a while or replace, but the tablet…
“Yes, well, I try to be a good father, you know,” Tony said, running his hands through his hair. “But the kids are acting out, and I have no idea why.”
Loki’s smile widened a little, and he tilted in look past Tony and further into the shop, observing the chaos within. It probably didn’t look all that more of a mess than it normally did, but Loki spent a lot of time down in the shop, so he would notice more than most people would. He knew where there was meant to be messes and where there wasn’t.
The bots, on seeing Loki, both perked up quite a bit, lifting up on their struts and waving their fingers at him. Loki chuckled and waved back.
“Acting out, are they?” he asked, raising a brow. “From what I understand that could be a sign of not having enough to preoccupy them. Have you been giving them all of the love and attention they need, Anthony? Perhaps setting them up on playdates with other robots their own age?”
“Ha ha, you’re hilarious.” Tony rolled his eyes, sighing.
Loki stepped close, closer and faster than he expected, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I am hilarious,” Loki agreed, ignoring the flush Tony could feel spreading over his cheeks. “But it’s not an entirely empty question.”
Tony shook his head, taking a small step backwards. He still wasn’t entirely used to casual gestures of affection from Loki. It wasn’t that he didn’t like or appreciate them, but it was still a little… overwhelming? It was a lot to take in, being Loki’s lover, and Tony had had to progress in small increments in order to absorb the reality of it.
Thankfully, Loki didn’t seem to mind his apparent hesitance, taking any sign of uncertainty Tony gave with a small smile and a wicked little flash of his eyes. He had all the proof he needed, after all, to know that Tony wasn’t running from him any time soon.
“Not entirely empty?” Tony repeated, looking back at the bots. They were, of course, behaving themselves perfectly now that there was another witness in the room. “It’s not like they’re dogs, Lokes, they don’t exactly need walks to run off all the extra energy they’ve got going on.”
“You’re current blood pressure would suggest otherwise.”
“Would you not do that, it’s creepy.”
Loki held up his hands, chuckling. “I’m merely suggesting, Anthony, that they might be feeling the need to have more of your attention than they’re currently getting. They may not be dogs, but they’re hardly machines, are they?”
“No, not really…” He looked over at the bots, but mostly to hide his smile. The bots were far from being just machines, but there weren’t very many people who could see that. It was easy, for example, to see how advanced JARVIS was, and to think of him as being a little more human. But the robots, because of their relative simplicity and their tendency towards clumsiness, were usually looked on as little more than sophisticated toys, rather than intelligences in their own right.
Loki had seen it, though. It was probably one of the first things which had really gotten Tony to look at him with more than suspicion.
“Then it stands to reason that they would need more in order to remain happy.” Loki shifted slightly, coming nearer to Tony, but respecting his personal space enough to stand at the table next to him, leaning one hip against the edge and looking over the bots. “What all have they been up to?”
“Oh…” he waved his hand vaguely. “Typical kid stuff, I guess. Hiding things, spiking my coffee with sugar… They got a hold of the stereo the other day and set it to one of the most obnoxious stations they could find. Yesterday Dum-E decided that taking things while I wasn’t holding them wasn’t quite enough, and grabbed what I was using right out of my hands.”
“A little rude, maybe, but it doesn’t seem so bad…”
“It was a welding torch.”
“Ah. I can see where the concern is in that case, yes.”
“Ye-eah. Frankly I—well, I would have said that I prefer it when I’m getting chased around with the fire extinguishers than with the actual fire, but they’ve managed to escalate that, as well.”
“And how did they escalate randomly dousing you with extinguishers?” There was a smile playing around Loki’s lips at this point, one which he seemed to be doing his best to repress. Somehow that made it all the more infectious, and Tony found he was having a little trouble keeping from grinning as well.
“They gathered up every single one they could find and built a pyramid out of them.”
Yeah, Loki was definitely holding back his laughter, now. His lips were twitching and his eyes sparkling with the mirth he couldn’t let out.
“It’s not funny! You know what they’re like with those things, the sight of so many of them in one place about gave me a heart attack.”
“It’s an impressive endeavor,” Loki managed, his voice strained. “Perhaps you should consider investing in some very large building blocks for them?”
“Again, hilarious. Though,” he said, frowning a little as he recalled one of the bots’ behaviors from the day before. “If you want impressive, you ought to have been here yesterday. For a certain kind of impressive, anyway…”
“Oh?” Loki looked at him, absolutely rapt. “Do tell. What did they get up to yesterday which was so very impressive?”
Tony settled one hip against his own table, absently mirroring Loki. “Well, at first I didn’t realize what they were actually doing. At first, I was worried that something had gone wrong with them, because they both, without any sort of input from me, started… bouncing, I guess? Raising and lowering on their struts, over and over again.”
“Whatever for?”
Tony shrugged. “I didn’t know. Like I said, I thought maybe something had gone snap inside their little circuit brains. But as I listened, I realized that they were being rhythmic. The more I listened, I figured out that they were actually making music. They’ve never done that before.”
“That is impressive,” Loki agreed, looking over at the bots. They were going about their business, as though they hadn’t spent the entire morning being nuisances. They managed to give the sense that they were paying attention to what was being said about them. “That suggests a level of cognizance which is… actually quite staggering.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Just as he had at the time, Tony felt a swell of pride for his bots and their progress. Creativity wasn’t something which could be installed, it had to be learned, had to be developed on its own. Dum-E and U had managed to do just that.
“It would have been a lot more impressive if it hadn’t been for the tune they’d picked out.”
“What did they pick?”
“Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley.”
For a moment Loki was silent, and Tony wondered if he would understand the significance of the song. Then his face crumpled, and he doubled over, laughing until his entire frame shook.
Tony joined in on the laughter. He couldn’t help it. It really was funny, when he came to think of it. His own bots had made a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence, easily at the same level as JARVIS, and they had used it to rickroll him at the very first opportunity.
If that wasn’t an indicator of their very individual personalities, he didn’t know what was.
Something else occurred to him, as well, the certainty settling over him easily.
“You put them up to all of this, didn’t you?”
Loki looked up, grin still spread wide, green eyes dancing. “Why on earth would you say that, Anthony?”
As statements went, it was about as good as a confession.
“Because you’re you,” Tony said, raising a brow at him. “And it’s the sort of thing you would do. And because you’re you, they would actually listen. They like you, so they’d try and do what you told them.”
“As though I would ever tell them to misbehave,” he said primly, which was an interesting effect, considering he still had that grin on his face. “At the most, I would suggest.”
“You absolute ass,” Tony laughed. “Do you have any idea what sort of hell your suggesting put me through for the last week?”
If anything, Loki looked even more proud of himself, and not in the least repentant. Not that Tony had expected him to. “Well, I wasn’t wrong. It was all a ploy to get more of your attention. It was just coming from more sources than you might have expected.”
Tony rolled his eyes, and ignored the little thrill of uncertainty which came over him as he neared the man, stepping right into Loki’s space and wrapping his arms around his waist. Loki froze for a second, startled, before relaxing into Tony’s hold and returning it, his smile going soft.
“If you wanted more of my attention, all you had to do was ask for it.”
“Ah, but Anthony, where would be the fun in that?”
Tony shook his head, leaning forward until there was no space left between them.