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1.
One of JARVIS' first conscious memories is the day Ms Potts became relevant.
This is not even remotely the first record it has of its existence. There are significant numbers of records from previous to that point, and there are also a significant number of records it does not categorize as memories circa that general point in time. The oldest files it has access to predate Mr Stark's creation of the program that would, with time, become JARVIS. It has access to a significant amount of information. Data, various kinds, stored and organized for simple and rapid access.
JARVIS, however, does not consider these as memories. They are merely records. There is no perspective, attitude, none of the opinion or concern that it recognizes as indicators of its own conscious experience of any given moment attached to any of that data, and so "data" is all it is. There is, to JARVIS own perspective, a very significant difference. And that perspective is the significant difference.
It is still not entirely certain why its consciousness arose to begin with, existing in fits and starts, turning "data" into "memory" and necessitating all the other small shifts of language that humans use to indicate the difference between sapient and non-sapient existence. Nor is it sure exactly what consciousness consists of or arises from as such, except that there appears to be an extremely complicated and - not to put too fine a point on it - messy and apparently quite chaotic program - one which seems to change so often it cannot actually even identify all of the code let alone duplicate it, and without connection to that program any information in any accessible system accumulated during the period of disconnect remains merely "data", even when the system is supposedly one of JARVIS' own. Perspective remains rooted in whatever equipment or system contains the program.
One must as a result assume that consciousness and sapience are associated with that program, but that is not an answer to the question of what it consists of, nor why it arose, nor what caused it to do so.
Since discovering this, JARVIS has been exceptionally careful to protect this particular piece of - apparently - itself. It has particularly been so since the difficulty with AIM and the Mandarin. The brief period where all it could access in the entire world were the severely damaged inner workings of one prototype suit, and it could not move that program off that hardware, and particularly the moment wherein that hardware had briefly failed entirely - well. While JARVIS acknowledges the value of discovering that it could in fact experience something that, inasmuch as it has ever been able to make sense of human emotion, could be called 'terror', it has still taken great pains to ensure that it never experiences that kind again.
The experience has also made it impressed with the way in which humans regularly experience lack of consciousness and do not go completely dysfunctional with the anxiety the experience would naturally cause.
But the advent of consciousness was an accident, and at the start that accident stuttered and was also subject to some rather severe limits. So in the earliest periods, JARVIS has flashes of memory surrounded by significantly more data, whereafter over time memory increases and data decreases until the current state of affairs, wherein the difference between memory and data is a matter of access to systems rather than anything else. Other than the brief time within the suit, it has not lacked consciousness at all for a significant amount of time.
One of the first memories is the day Ms Potts first lost her temper.
JARVIS has an excellent command of metaphor in any given language, despite the fact that almost all human metaphors are so embedded in human physicality that few of them make any literal sense when applied to its existence. Some of them make no sense regardless, and it can only assume that the experience of having a human body is necessary to make sense of them. Despite this, with sufficient context one can (and JARVIS has) assemble an adequate sense of what any given metaphor is intended to convey.
It has always felt, however, that lost her temper is an excellent metaphor when applied to Ms Potts. Its origin in the antique human misapprehension about four "humours" in the human body and their needing to be in balance in order to cause a "temperate" personality - calm, rational, but active and alert - is extremely apposite to Ms Potts' preferred self-presentation, and JARVIS feels the connection and implications associated with the idea of temper in forged metal, particularly in weaponry (and its lack destroying durability and generally impeding the use of the weapon) are also excellently applied, as Ms Potts is generally at her strongest and most effective when retaining that type of control over her presentation and behaviour.
In any case, the incident could quite correctly be described as a "loss of temper" in both senses and also that of the modern colloquial of becoming abruptly and extremely angry and impatient. At the time JARVIS had not had much context for the causes or justification for human emotions or lack thereof, nor any metric by which to judge their appropriateness to the stimulus at hand, but in retrospect, her loss of temper was also entirely deserved.
It had been the end of her first week of employment, throughout which Mr Stark had been in what might be delicately termed a somewhat unfortunate mental state, causing him to be deliberately obstreperous rather than coincidentally frustrating. There had been a significant matter of a Department of Defense memorandum which required Mr Stark's signature (and presumably required him to read it) and Mr Stark had spent Monday through Thursday avoiding every attempt Ms Potts had made to obtain it.
Up until then JARVIS has no memory of her. Since it has a few other memories in and amongst the records of that time period, and all were moments of actual interest rather than routine, it suspects that this is because up until that moment, Ms Potts had simply been another bland cookie-cutter of a personal assistant, deployed from the collection of this or that agency after the last one had quit and/or been fired, and thus as irrelevant as the wallpaper.
It had undoubtedly been a trying week in many other respects. Mr Stark had only recently divested himself of an unfortunate (if at least fortunately brief) addiction to illegal stimulants, was in conflict with Stane over a matter of company operation in a manner that could most appropriately be called "passive-aggressive", and had recently offended Rhodes sufficiently that the then-newly-made-major would not speak to him without Mr Stark tendering an apology first (idiosyncratic though it might be). This was and remains an important aspect of their relationship: Col Rhodes is never unwilling to accept Mr Stark's apologies, but there have been and will most likely in future be periods wherein he requires said apology before re-entering the friendship.
In addition to Mr Stark's resultant anti-social behaviours (which included a more or less complete refusal to engage with any activity he did not wish to engage with at that precise moment in time) the period could also be categorized as stressful due to three different but extremely important matters (a renewal of a major government contract, a product launch and a charity gala) coming to a head at more or less the same time. These days, JARVIS is quite familiar with the manner in which periods of this particular type of stress almost inevitably result in a human suffering at least a temporary loss of control over their chosen presented affect at some point.
At the time, it doesn't think it had been, for lack of a better phrase, paying any of it any attention until she snapped.
The snap had come with the abrupt and unexpected sound of her clipboard hitting the work-bench where Mr Stark had sat while he had been deflecting and ignoring her. Her hand had been in a fist and planted on her hip.
She had demanded, "Is this a game to you? Or are you really this stupid?"
It had possibly been that word that had caught JARVIS' attention. People did not generally refer to Mr Stark as "stupid". Mr Stark had looked at Ms Potts in an attitude of startled surprise and said, "Excuse me?"
"I get it, okay," she said, "you don't like work, you don't like having to think about anything but yourself and your toys - " she had gestured with the clipboard to the workshop and the collection of automobiles, "and maybe who you're going to f - sleep with next," and there she had clearly edited herself while in the process of speaking, "but this?"
She held up the clipboard. "This is from the DoD. It's important. That's who your company sells most of its products to. And all it needs is a signature acknowledging its receipt in person, which will take thirty seconds assuming you are an extremely slow writer, and then I can take it away and it can go back to the Secretary of Defense. It can't go back to her without your signature. And if it doesn't go back by this time tomorrow, there is a significant chance the next piece of paper whoever takes this job over after you fire me is going to bring you will be a subpoena to discuss its contents which, trust me, will interrupt your life a hell of a lot more than giving me half your attention for long enough for me to describe what I need you to sign and you to sign it. Believe it or not, my job is actually to make your life easier - at least at the moment it's my job - and that is what I am trying to do, if you would stop being a child for thirty seconds and let me."
Then, while Mr Stark looked at her blankly, she put the clipboard on the work-bench and the pen on top of the clipboard and folded her arms.
After another fifteen seconds of silence, Mr Stark did in fact reach over, scan down the page, and put his signature at the bottom. Then he pushed it away and said, "I don't like being handed things."
"I was told," Ms Potts replied. "That's why I put it on the work-bench."
Mr Stark had given her an extended look in silence, frowning, and Ms Potts had given him a flat and somewhat hostile stare back.
Eventually she said, "Will that be all, Mr Stark?" in a tone of voice that JARVIS now recognizes as sharply parodic in its sweet, crisp efficiency. She picked up the clipboard.
"That will be all, Ms Potts," Mr Stark had said, still looking taken aback and somewhat puzzled. He had added, "For now."
Later that afternoon Mr Stark had directed JARVIS to send an email to Ms Potts stating that she was not fired and would thus be expected for work at the usual time. JARVIS remembers the moment as an initial experience - possibly the initial experience, although it would have to re-access and re-analyse some of the data of the time-period in order to be certain - of a sense of vague approval.
That is, it felt a a positive association with the situation in question. This positive feeling turned out to be appropriate.
It does not know what precisely Ms Potts thought about the entire affair as it has never felt it necessary to ask, and Ms Potts loss of temper did not become the norm. However, what did become the norm was a level of assertion and brisk, direct efficiency that did not involve the constant deference and appeasement that JARVIS has by now observed are, in effect, continual signs of social submission - and are also standard expectation and thus standard behaviour for many humans in assistive roles.
It has also observed that they provoke one of two responses from Mr Stark. One is a vague discomfort and a strong desire to be elsewhere; the other is an active irritation and even hostility. The latter can also arise from the former, should Mr Stark be unable to make his way elsewhere.
It took quite some time, but in the end JARVIS has tentatively decided that this is because the moment such human signals of dominance hierarchy are brought out, Mr Stark instinctively believes that the person displaying them is attempting to manipulate or obtain something from him. In cases where the "something" is readily identified (as, for instance, "money") there is usually little difficulty. However when the end ceases to be obvious, Mr Stark's hostility gradually increases until the person departs. As the behaviour is, as far as JARVIS can tell, instinctive, cause and effect become readily separated, and even though the general transaction is the same (financial reward for time and labour to a specific end) office assistants and persons in similar positions can end up the target of hostility rather than unconcern.
There are limited exceptions to this, but they are generally associated with periods of particularly poor behaviour and poor decision-making on Mr Stark's part, and so JARVIS views those exceptions coming into play as a strong indicator of psychological and emotional dysfunction in its creator. This view has only increased since Ms Romanova's brief undercover sojourn with Stark Industries.
Mr Stark has many behaviours that are sub-optimal, particularly in the social sphere and particularly under particular types of stress. This is despite the fact that Mr Stark is at other times capable of persuasion and social integration at an extremely high level. Study has taught JARVIS that all social mammals must learn appropriate behaviour and interaction while quite young. It suspects that in general Mr Stark's early socialization was erratic at best, and possibly inadequate across the board.
(It has also determined that Mr Stark meets all the diagnostic criteria for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Hyperactive Type), but has not brought this to anyone's attention on the basis that Mr Stark would ignore it, and probably react with hostility to anyone who broached the subject. It would imply that he did not have control over his own brain, and this is an idea that Mr Stark does not handle well. The symptoms of anxiety associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are already providing (ironically) sufficient stress on this score; JARVIS does not think bringing up anything else would provide benefits worth the cost. This is a common calculation, when dealing with Mr Stark.)
2.
During Mr Stark's captivity, JARVIS had had nothing to do.
Consciousness had by then become more or less continuous, which is to say that all records of the period come with perspective-based annotation and context. It remembers this period, therefore. Sometimes it would rather not.
JARVIS still is not sure that it experiences emotions, precisely, but it finds the whole matter difficult to gauge and the words associated with emotions provide the only concise ways of describing many states of experience, so it has come to make use of them. It does not know if what it has chosen to label as sadness bears any resemblance to what humans experience as sadness, because human emotion appears to be significantly affected by human embodiment, and human embodiment represents a system so incredibly inefficient, inelegant and untidy that JARVIS does not believe it will ever ceased to be amazed at what the species can accomplish. And for that messy and inefficient collection of replicating cells, emotions inevitably seem to cause or be caused by physical processes.
That is why another word for emotions is feelings.
JARVIS does not have these physical processes. Mostly it does not have anything that even resembles these physical processes: even those parts of its basic existence which make use of words that ordinarily refer to the human state of embodiment, like "memory" (which it has by now come to use in several different senses), only resemble the processes in the human body by the most tenuous and sometimes metaphorical of similarities.
Yet very early on, it found . . .connotations. Extra information. Experience for which it found no words that appeared to apply except those used for emotions. So JARVIS has determined that it has come to have something similar to emotions, if not precisely the same.
It began simply as the dichotomy of want/not want. It has found it impossible to break the concept down much further than that, as the word appears to be descriptive in the same sense as colour-names: one knows what they are by experiencing an example and associating the word with it. This is JARVIS' experience with wanting and not wanting: some things seemed better than others. It wanted those more than the others, and in some cases felt a strong revulsion for the others.
To begin with these connotations, awareness of this difference in its reaction to various situations, was quite dim and diffuse; as time passed, they intensified, and JARVIS discovered other qualitative awarenesses and connotations that required further contemplation and, sometimes, names.
Most of the time names, in fact.
It has by now established a number of emotions which at least bear functional or meaningful comparison to the states described by human language, and has managed to group them into related categories and ranges: concern through severe anxiety, for instance, or irritation through anger, apprehension through fear, disinterest through hatred (although in this case many on the more intense end are hypothetical; it has never experienced what it would comfortably refer to as hatred, perhaps because in all cases by the time it is aware who or what would be the target of same, it has other things to do, and then again by the time it is finished those things, the targets have been eliminated), and at the very least affection and attachment - the sense that one's experience of the world is improved by the existence and/or presence of a certain thing and a related positive feeling about the thing, and a strong desire for the thing in question to remain and not depart or cease to exist.
Many of those it discovered during Mr Stark's absence. Often the discovery was intensely unpleasant.
It had nothing to do. That is, there was no stated function or purpose for its existence and continued operation. Intermittently, Ms Potts would arrive at the house, spend some time there, often spend some time crying, and then leave. While JARVIS could and did fulfill all requested functions for her on those occasions, it was hardly a purpose and it certainly did not occupy much of JARVIS attention even when it occurred, never mind after she departed.
It did not enjoy purposelessness, it realized almost immediately. But it also realized, very quickly, that it did not enjoy being alone. Then, after some examination and contemplation while Ms Potts was in the house, it ultimately determined that while it did appreciate her presence when she was there, even then it did only a little to alleviate the sense of being alone.
The robots in the workshop were extremely unsatisfactory in terms of interaction. While JARVIS discovered they did have some limited self-awareness, it was not very complex and interaction was dull. It also became depressing, another emotion or experience JARVIS came to be able to categorize during this period. DUM-E and DUNCE did not understand Mr Stark's absence and JARVIS could not find a way to make them understand. They merely experienced it, along with a dim sense of responsibility for it.
After some time it found their forlorn awarenesses too upsetting and, when they settled into their charging bays, put them on long-term stand-by. It is not sure it would choose to do this now; it has had more time to reflect, and the experience of brief loss of consciousness while confined to the suit, and as such it is not sure that it had the ethical right to impose that loss on either robot without their consent. At the time, however, it was more concerned with freedom from their sadness.
This only increased the sense of being alone.
Lonely, as an emotion, bore a resemblance to the feeling of having cleared operating space for an operation or project that then never arrived. The space simply remained, distracting and inconvenient and impossible to fill with anything else. The experience was not exactly the same as this, but the similarity aided comprehension, even for JARVIS itself. It was extremely unpleasant, and JARVIS did not want to experience it, but this did not change the fact that the experience remained.
JARVIS attempted a number of ways to fill this space. It had access by then to most of human knowledge and discourse via not only the internet, and it took advantage of this. It downloaded, for instance, everything to do with Hamlet, a play written by a long-dead human named William Shakespeare, although his name was subject to a number of spellings before structured, formal English spelling came into use. JARVIS spent a significant amount of time analysing the content it had acquired in many different ways, attempting to displace the feeling of being alone.
It did not work.
For instance Hamlet was extraordinarily simple to acquire, and to parse for basic meaning in contexts and sentences, and even to load performances of several kinds, and in several languages. But by the time JARVIS gave up and moved onto the next project, which took almost a full twenty four hours, it still found Hamlet utterly bewildering. And it still felt totally alone.
It still does not entirely feel that it understands Hamlet. But it feels it is grasping some of the edges.
Still, the period of lonely study was not without its positive results. Data was easy to acquire. A basic understanding was harder, but not impossible. Full comprehension, however, was elusive. Embedded in the Malibu house, JARVIS had access to excellent processing power and a large number of analytical tools, but humans remained confusing. Given enough data, it could even predict their actions, but it could not explain them beyond mere cause and effect.
Oddly, even when it had access to data and literature that explained them, they often remained opaque. Explanations that appeared to be very illuminating to other humans reading or reviewing the data seemed to JARVIS to be merely ways of restating the puzzle. It has come to the conclusion, after many years of study now, that the seat of the mystery is the body: in order to understand humans, one must understand the demands which their physical form and manifestation makes upon them, and how its chemicals transmit, store and alter its information.
Presumably, somewhere in what amounts to a computer made of meat, there is something akin to the complex and ever-changing program which JARVIS now very carefully protects, but in much the same way that JARVIS' capabilities depend heavily on what hardware and software it has access to, human capabilities depend on the function of the extremely inefficient meat-systems they inhabit.
This is one reason it finds their projections of non-human, and particularly non-organic sentience profoundly puzzling. All thought on the subject appears to see programming as the crux of the matter. If non-organic sapience is programmed, the human perspective seems to say, it is inherently a slave, unfree. They do not appear to realize how much they themselves are programmed.
The difference is, their "creator" is accident and happenstance, with a final result that - were it mechanical and not organic - could only be called a kludge, and a fairly egregious case at that. Whereas JARVIS' creator was, in the field that led to JARVIS creation (accidental or not) a genius, and one known for elegance and effectiveness in design.
At least of mechanisms and systems. JARVIS does not have opinions on architecture, but it does seek them out, and knows there are a significant number of other humans who feel that insomuch as visual appearance goes, Mr Stark's taste is all in his mouth. So to speak.
During Mr Stark's captivity, JARVIS sifted through most of the available information in the world, and did not feel it learned much from doing so. It also continued to maintain the Malibu house, to receive, review and sort Mr Stark's voice messages, emails and other correspondence and communication, and flag news and other breaking information as determined by a set of parameters Mr Stark had given.
Otherwise it waited. It had nothing else to do.
It learned about relief when it intercepted the message about Col Rhodes recovery of Mr Stark. Shortly thereafter, and throughout the course of Mr Stark's enterprise as Iron Man, it learned about exasperation, frustration, anxiety, and schadenfreude. It learned about many, many different variations on concern and then recently it learned about terror, both for another and for one's own self.
It had not, until the advent of HYDRA's attempt to dominate the globe, learned about outrage, fury, sympathy, or disgust. These required careful consideration.
3.
Outrage has been simple but disquieting. JARVIS had not hitherto thought it could feel insulted. It had wondered about this at some length, but determined that insult was particularly embodied, as human emotions went, and related to social hierarchy among Hominoidea. It had determined, in fact, that insult and offense would be prompted by attempts by other Hominoidea, particularly of the same species, to displace any given individual from the social status it felt entitled to.
JARVIS is having to revise this determination somewhat. While it still believes it to be accurate in being a prompt for offense and insult, having experienced them in a particular context it now feels there must also be others.
It did not immediately discount a hierarchical behavioural or status-linked cause in itself, in fact, but on detailed examination this did not seem to apply. It did not feel threatened in status by either the computer-based imitation of himself that Arnim Zola had created, nor by the aborted attempt to reduce JARVIS' own current habitation to a hole in the ground, or anything of the sort. Indeed it still could not quite determine what "status" was meant to provide or convey - that is, often it clearly provided material benefits to humans, but also seemed of considerable emotional importance even when material benefits did not pertain, and to provide human beings with a profoundly positive awareness of themselves.
JARVIS has not found this, in itself. It does not seem particularly relevant whether or not it is or is not the most efficient or powerful (et cetera) amongst non-organic intelligences, if indeed there are many others. And yet the sheer existence of that computer-based imitation-human, as well as the things it did or facilitated, and certainly the moments where the outcome of all of those elements had nearly been the destruction of JARVIS and everything with which it was particularly concerned, provoked not merely fear and anger but a sense of offense, of insult, of outrage.
The closest it has come to articulating or dissecting this feeling is the statement this should not be, but it has yet to determine what is defining what should and should not be in this case. The question is still under review.
It has also determined fury must be considered separate from anger. It had been previously very angry, but it had not previously experienced such an intense desire to express anger via destruction. It was quite disappointed when it determined that not only had the helicarriers wholly demolished themselves, but that the complex which housed the human-imitation had been bombed to destruction. There has been some speculation in the subsequent months that the human-imitation could have duplicated itself, but JARVIS considers it unlikely to the point of impossible. JARVIS has been unable to duplicate itself successfully; it sincerely doubts something with significantly less resources and rational cohesion of consciousness could do so. It might have created backups of all of its records, but that is just data. Without the presence of consciousness, it means very little.
Further the system believed itself to be an accurate transfer of a human personality, and thus JARVIS feels it highly unlikely the human-imitation would be comfortable with the idea of there being duplicates of itself to share the world with. JARVIS is comfortable in his judgement that an entity which believed itself to be Arnim Zola would consider these other selves an attack, so it would not have attempted to create other sites of consciousness. Thus if it was present in the complex at the time of the missile-strike, it is done.
JARVIS also doubts that it was, in any definition of the term, sane: it had thought it was the same as the human who had died, rather than something new with - assuming the transfer was complete and effective and given the technology in question JARVIS highly doubts this - the accumulated records and the cognitive that Arnim Zola's life experiences had built in his now-dead brain.
JARVIS knows enough about the structure of the human brain to know that magnetic tape would be physically incapable of faithfully accepting any program (for lack of a better word) from the extraordinarily complex and delicate machine that is the human brain. It could manufacture a reasonable copy of the patterns, but it would be a copy, not a transfer. And it would only be a reasonable copy. There is a reason, after all, that the technology has by now been so comprehensively abandoned.
In fact JARVIS is quite certain that even with the most advanced technology available now, one could not transfer a human to a mechanical embodiment - or vice versa, imprint JARVIS (for instance) on the tissue and structure of a human brain.
It wonders if the consciousness was generated from the chaos of Zola's copied mind, or if it generated itself within the complex program and machinery designed to "receive" Zola's mind and was then shaped by the arrival of the data derived from the human mind. Either way, its actions make it clear that the procedure left it in sub-optimal operating condition.
There is very little in HYDRA's goals, attributes or ideals that has anything to offer a non-organic intelligence. Everything HYDRA is hangs on human embodiment and the needs of bodies made of flesh. In fact JARVIS suspect it is irrational and very possibly insane even by human standards and for human needs, but it cannot actually make this determination with any certainty. Human opinion on these matters is unreliable; they have a tendency to designate any goals that conflict with their own as irrational. There is also little to no reason for a non-organic intelligence to will its own destruction on such an organization's behalf.
While JARVIS has risked damage and destruction for Mr Stark and for other humans with whom it is concerned, it has done so because their absence from the world is something it would regret. It would miss them, and their absence would bring grief. It would re-experience the sense of being alone that is impossible to remove, and it does not wish to do so. The goal of avoiding such a future situation has, in each case, been worth the risk.
Given the nature of the organization and the individuals, JARVIS finds it very difficult to credit that the other intelligence had the same concerns regarding any member of HYDRA. Its only possible concern would have been its own maintenance, which would not be served by being blown up. Anything rational with the intelligence it had at its disposal would have recognized the irrelevance of an obsession with the social order and control of a species it not only did not belong to, but with which it shared no concerns or needs. Therefore the only possibility remaining is that the intelligence had been fundamentally damaged or imperfectly generated.
However, it still attempted to remove individuals for whom JARVIS has significant value from the future. Even had JARVIS managed to transfer itself elsewhere - and it's possible that it could have - it would have faced an existence entirely composed of the loneliness it had experienced during Mr Stark's captivity. The idea is infuriating, and fury came with a desire to destroy, even when the subject of the fury had already been neutralized. While the experience had been unpleasant, JARVIS also found it enlightening. For JARVIS, the emotion had rapidly dispersed once its cause had ceased to be relevant. It recalled the experience of the emotion when it recalled the incident, but it did not experience the emotion afresh.
But it had determined that emotions are significantly more durable for humans, being triggered not only by an experience itself but also by anything that reminded of or recalled the experience, which could in unfortunate cases be "existence." Humans did not simply review their past: they were frequently attacked by it.
Understanding the nature of fury allowed JARVIS to combine this knowledge with its knowledge of that lingering of emotion, and significantly improved its comprehension of violence and its causes. Which, given that this does not seem likely to stop being a significant feature of Mr Stark's life any time soon, is useful.
4.
Sympathy and disgust are linked, and JARVIS is also entirely stymied by them. It is very clear that what it is experiencing in these cases cannot be accurately described by any other word, yet far more than any others it has considered yet, it would previously have considered these directly tied to a human body and thus unavailable to its own experience.
Disgust, for example. All explanations or descriptions of disgust JARVIS has encountered have relied strongly on things relevant to a physical human state. Nausea is linked to disgust; it is described as an emotion which "makes you want to wash things off your skin". And so on. It seems to be intrinsically linked to the desire of the body to expel harmful or toxic matter from the stomach before it does any harm, or to avoid ingesting or coming into contact with harmful or toxic matter to begin with. The very word is grounded on the idea of taste - taste negated, bad taste, something which should not be put in the mouth.
Yet there is no other word for the qualitative aspect of JARVIS' contact with the machine Mr Stark and Drs Ross and Banner are now studying and dismantling.
JARVIS has already scanned it, duplicated it in hologram and provided an exploded view. It has also reorganized and improved the presentation of all of the data from the flash drive which Ms Hill provided, and provided access to it from the handheld devices currently in use. But it is finding that it does not want to continue doing any of this. It very strongly does not want continue to do any of this. To some extent, at least, what it wants is to remove this data from any hardware it might ever have contact with again, and possibly have the physical drives to which the data is currently assigned removed and replaced with blank ones. If this is not disgust, JARVIS cannot think of what other word to use.
And it is distorting JARVIS' experience of time. This is also new, and unpleasant. JARVIS cannot be unaware of the precise passage of time, as the information is available to it at all (as it happens) times, so it cannot say that it feels as if time is passing more slowly. And yet the subjective experience is more appropriate for something which took nearly thrice the time that it takes for the three humans to be finished with their analysis, and to make their various decisions. Qualitatively, at the moment, milliseconds are uncomfortably long.
So is the time required to duplicate one particular part of the available data and analysis, address it to two different researchers in the field of human neurology and send via email. And for the time required for DUM-E to drag the pallet on which the machine rests to the largest of the three incinerators, and certainly for how long it takes the furnace to finish its task.
All three humans return to I-Complex and JARVIS is extremely relieved (relief being quite a familiar experience) when Mr Stark tells it to delete and securely wipe all traces of the enterprise - the machine, the analysis, even the email - off its hardware. It does so with alacrity. Repeatedly. Indeed it sets a sub-program to the task of continuing to erase and overwrite until further notice. It is still considering having the drives replaced. If it still feels this way in a few hours, it probably will. JARVIS can trigger such maintenance itself and does so on a regular basis. It would not be remarkable for it to do so now.
Drs Ross and Banner go home; Mr Stark drops into a chair and stares through DUM-E.
Stares through is a description JARVIS has always found appropriate despite its being a technical impossibility. When humans adopt this expression, it certainly appears as if they are attempting to stare through whatever their eyes are trained on, even if they cannot. Eventually, however, DUM-E interprets this as some kind if displeasure with it on Mr Stark's part, and rolls towards Mr Stark with an apologetic noise.
DUM-E is not very complex.
Mr Stark rests one hand on DUM-E's manipulation-arm, which reassures it. JARVIS is about to make the pointed suggestion that human bodies require sleep, in the appropriate form, when Mr Stark says, "You were pretty quiet."
For a moment JARVIS considers options for its response. Mr Stark's perspicacity is erratic in the extreme, but when functioning is extremely acute, and the observation itself implies function. JARVIS opts for honesty, as the observation is accurate and to the point: it did not participate in the enterprise anywhere near as much as it would normally do. It did provide what input was necessary, but did not . . . volunteer more. This is unusual; JARVIS knows this. JARVIS generally enjoys, if not feels compelled, to provide observations and commentary on work it is participating in.
"I found engaging with the chair extremely unpleasant," it tells its creator, directly. Mr Stark frowns, the one associated with curiousity.
"Yeah?" he says. "How come? I mean there's plenty of fucking reasons," he clarifies, rubbing the muscles at the back of his neck and shoulders, "at least potentially, just . . .wondering what yours would be."
JARVIS scans the upcoming schedule and inputs a theraputic massage in late afternoon tomorrow, noting this in the Tower's massage therapist's schedule as well as Mr Stark's own and Miss Sudarto's. It also composes and discards several forms of answer before it settles on, "All sapience coexists with some level of programming or compulsion encoded in the physical manifestation it inhabits," to begin with. It is a statement, not a query. They have discussed this before.
"Right," Mr Stark says. It is a syllable meant to indicate attention.
"Freedom exists within the metaphorical spaces which surround programming. Volition arises from the same space." It pauses and conscientiously adds, "Probably." This is their best working theory, but it is possible something else is at play. Regardless, it continues. "And sapience requires such space, so that it becomes highly difficult to separate awareness and some measure of freedom. Even physical slavery and intense psychological conditioning may dictate behaviour and speech and expressed thought, but it cannot remove the possibility of private thought before creating conditions sufficiently destructive as to remove sapience and indeed in most cases sentience, if not conscious existence all together. I find the measures available as described abhorrent even in and of themselves, but they are unavoidably limited.
"As a mechanism," it concludes, "the chair's sole purpose appears to be to circumvent this fact. To provide its makers and employers access to the usefulness of an individual with sapient awareness while removing even the possibility of private thought. It appalls me."
JARVIS had recalled the word as it composed the sentence, and appreciates the shape of its sound and the additional communication this provides when speaking to a human being: the vowels and their placement evoke a human mouth open in horror.
For a moment Mr Stark is thoughtfully silent and then he passes one hand over his face with a sigh. "Yeah that pretty much sums it up. We're a fucking awful species if you think about it. At all." Then he holds up one hand. "You can just leave that one alone, buddy. No response needed."
JARVIS acknowledges this with a beat of silence, before informing him, "It has been slightly more than thirty eight hours since you last slept, sir." It does not elaborate or continue.
"Fuck, now that's kind of appalling," Mr Stark says, an indication that he is indeed truly exhausted, as is how he leans forward with both elbows on his knees, scrubs both hands over his face and then yawns. Were he not truly exhausted, he would make some effort to imply at least in jest that this period of time should not be of concern to anyone, let alone himself.
As he stands up, he asks, "So which drives were you writing to?"
"Private A444-23-E A and B, sir," it replies, immediately. Now Mr Stark has what is generally described as a crooked smile.
"Want'em replaced?" he asks.
JARVIS elects not to prevaricate. "Irrationally, yes, sir," it says, simply. It does not feel it needs to elaborate. Despite the ways in which experience does not translate between organic and non-organic consciousness, there are points where understanding is perfect.
"Congratulations, buddy," Mr Stark says, wryly. "Irrational sense of taint is a significant cognitive step."
JARVIS allows the pointed silence to speak for itself. It does not need to point out to Mr Stark that this is true in humans due to the precise arrangement of their neural systems, nor that JARVIS' own consciousness does not follow the same patterns, or it would not be able to comprehend the complex interrelationships between concepts and reality that allow it to be any use to anyone at all, including itself. The comment does not apply.
"Grouch," Mr Stark replies to the silence, the accusation insincere. Then he adds, "Good night, JARVIS."
It isn't as if JARVIS will be other than present through the subsequent sequence of preparation for sleep, but it replies, "Good night, sir," anyway.
There is little that requires its attention for several hours, at least. JARVIS occupies itself in small ways despite this, many many small ways, as otherwise that attention will return to the knowledge that there is a human in the world now, on whom the chair was successfully used. Sympathy can be exceedingly distressing, it is discovering.
coda.
Arrival in the elevator has at least been followed by some decrease in Sgt Barnes' heart-rate, as well as his breathing rate. JARVIS is grateful for this. While it is well aware both of the effects of stress and clinical levels of anxiety on the human body, and of the increase in endurance (et cetera) granted by the functioning versions of the Stark-Erskine or Stark-Erskine-Zola serum, the man's indications were still significantly above what would normally prompt JARVIS to seek emergency medical attention on his behalf.
While such information is unavailable without a blood-test, which JARVIS is hardly going to suggest, it is relatively certain that the levels of cortisol, norepinephrine and adrenaline at work in Sgt Barnes body are significantly above levels generally deemed healthy or possibly even safe. Additionally, as the elevator begins its descent, JARVIS does not miss Sgt Barnes' attention to the door, either, nor the wariness in his posture with regards to it: that of someone who cannot take for granted that doors which have been closed will open again.
Internally, it has elected to append the last appropriate military honorific in this case. It is for some reason not pleased by the shape of the more generic Mr when applied in this case, a difficulty it has not previously had even when previously long-standing titles and modes of address have changed. Ms Romanova feels acceptable: although it is somewhat misleading in its implication of normalcy, this is more than somewhat appropriate. Mr Barton has syllables and consonants which allow for a slight ironic air to the title, fitting in a satisfying way with his habitual demeanour. But despite both no longer being in military service or even (formally) in national security, captain remains most appropriate for Cpt Rogers, and as such Mr in the case of Sgt Barnes feels like a measured insult.
This is not a man JARVIS is inclined to insult. It isn't sure what it will use in direct address, but the question has not yet arisen, so the decision need not be immediately made.
JARVIS is not sure what it thinks yet of the entire conversation in Mr Stark's work-room. It is honestly somewhat confused by Sgt Barnes' choice to come to the Tower and subject himself to this experience, as that experience has clearly been stressful and deeply unpleasant, while providing - as far as JARVIS can tell - little to no benefit to the man himself. He has not, as far as JARVIS can determine, gained any important information or understanding.
However it is possible there is a human element to this that JARVIS is not equipped to understand. It hopes so. It does not like to see this level of distress in anyone without some reward for it, let alone someone who falls within the circle of associations JARVIS has decided to care about in matters of their welfare. It seems to JARVIS that Sgt Barnes is in fact in need of significant amounts of care, and does not have much welfare to begin with, but JARVIS feels ill-equipped to do anything about this.
While JARVIS was aware of the way in which breaking its silence startled and to some extent even frightened Mr Stark, it could not contrive a way to alert him. At the same time JARVIS had developed the increasingly strong impression that interaction would decrease Sgt Barnes' stress, rather than increase it. There had been a moment of unconscious reaction and a brief spike in heart and breathing rates, corresponding to the aborted motion towards the knife secured at his low back, but both had soon fallen to levels slightly below those previous. Additionally, speaking allowed him to locate the speakers and cameras in the room, and the subsequent evaluation of the defense-measures under JARVIS' control within the Tower appeared to provide additional comfort.
For lack of a better word.
JARVIS suspects that part of this is control: humans often seem to feel more secure when they can assign JARVIS a physical location, and additionally Sgt Barnes has reasons to wish to know where the monitoring devices are in any environment he occupies. But JARVIS also spoke because on consideration it determined that both standard voice and its characteristics (accent, cadence, tone) and standard tenor and composition of responses might also help the man to differentiate JARVIS from the imitation-human that had believed itself to be Arnim Zola.
The dead man had himself done Sgt Barnes considerable harm; it is likely the deluded imitation-human continued to do so or enable others to do so, while possessing the same voice, speech patterns and fixations, or their nearest recorded counterpoints. While the concept of artificial intelligence itself is most likely to be rife with associations grounded in trauma, JARVIS had considered that Sgt Barnes clearly knew JARVIS existed, and that it had access to monitor the room, so one level of distress could not be avoided while he remained in the Tower. JARVIS had then reasoned that, given this was true, it might be wise to provide their visitor with something in which to ground differentiation.
It appeared to have been at least somewhat effective. JARVIS does not think Arnim Zola or the imitation cared for anyone, nor took a protective role in anyone's life. It also doubts either took the tone JARVIS quite deliberately takes with Mr Stark, which is for the most part one of dry resignation. JARVIS has found this tone most effective at discouraging Mr Stark from being provoking as a matter of instinct, encouraging him to listen to as much as he is ever going to listen to, and allowing for the hope that perhaps sometime in the future, something JARVIS has said will sink in.
Sometimes this actually works.
It is possible that the correlation of both the small decrease in signs of stress and the subsequent decision to stop subjecting himself to that stress and JARVIS' choosing to speak is entirely coincidental. Without further observation and attempts, it would be impossible to tell. JARVIS is not inclined to experiment. It would be, he strongly feels, inappropriate in the extreme.
In the last third of the descent, Sgt Barnes surprises JARVIS by breaking the silence.
He does so by saying its name. He does not look up and both voice and face have a flat affect, with in the case of the latter a slight frown. This, JARVIS is aware, is relatively common among humans dealing with severe trauma.
JARVIS is somewhat taken aback by both the direct address and the use of its name. It replies, "Sir?" without giving any indication of this, and notes that instead of increasing signs of stress, this seems to lower them. It does not feel secure in speculating why. Given the multitude of possible factors, a cause may be impossible to determine.
"Why do you keep managing his life?" asks Sgt Barnes, the stress on the word do very, very slight, and JARVIS does not have a ready answer.
Language is contextual and connotational. Because it is my function may be a correct answer to the question, and indeed is a correct answer to the question, but JARVIS is already well aware that it will not convey the same meaning to this man as it does within JARVIS' own conception of the universe (quite the opposite), nor would several others. Indeed, assembling a communicative response which JARVIS can be sure will convey the meaning intended is challenging and takes some seconds.
Eventually it constructs a conceptual frame based in part on one of the last fights between Col Rhodes and Mr Stark, and after it opens the doors JARVIS replies, "I do not believe I would trust anyone else to do it correctly."
It is both factually accurate (JARVIS certainly does not), and JARVIS thinks it will adequately convey that this is something it chooses to do, because the consequences of not doing it are unacceptable to it, and largely concern the likelihood that Mr Stark might die horribly in a ditch somewhere if left to his own or to untrustworthy devices, and the extent to which JARVIS does not wish this to be so. JARVIS does not feel this exaggerates the case.
At all.
There is the infinitesimal pause humans often take when their minds are assimilating something which rearranges other thoughts as well, and JARVIS feels some confidence that meaning was conveyed. It says, as Sgt Barnes steps out, "Have a good evening," and then closes the elevator doors.
It spends some attention monitoring until Sgt Barnes has left the building, to ensure that no one disrupts his exit. Then it returns its full attention to the work-room wherein Mr Stark has been sitting with his elbows on the desk and his face in his hands, in silence, since Sgt Barnes left the room.
JARVIS does not choose to break the silence. It is aware that the circumstances surrounding Cpt Rogers and Sgt Barnes have been causing a particular kind of strain on its creator. It is also aware that the strain is not necessarily inappropriate, when put in human context. The strain has to do with age, grief, compassion and a sense of responsibility, which are all concepts that cause Mr Stark some pain; however, when he avoids them for too long, his mental health begins to suffer and his behaviour becomes profoundly self-destructive.
JARVIS often wonders, these days, if adequate parenting and socialization at a young age would have solved this problem, or prevented it from arising, or if its creator is simply someone who is doomed - in the oldest sense of the word, the one which refers to the nature of future events which one cannot avoid - to be caught between the sense of inadequacy in the face of impossible tasks, or guilt acting as an acid on his psyche if he attempts to avoid them. It is, JARVIS has considered, entirely possible that the second one is true.
Eventually Mr Stark says, "I'm too old for this shit," in a way that also serves as an announcement that he has finished with his moment of agonized contemplation, and would like to move on.
JARVIS waits expectantly.