[in the lab]
Bruce Banner: What's the rumpus?
Stark: Well, the scepter. You see, we were wondering how Strucker got so inventive. So, I've been analyzing the gem inside you may recognize.
[Stark brings up a 3D image of Jarvis's consciousness]
Bruce Banner: Jarvis.
JARVIS: Doctor.
Stark: Started out, JARVIS was just a natural language UI. Now he runs the Iron Legion. He runs more of the business than anyone besides Pepper.
Bruce Banner: Oh.
Stark: Top of the line.
Bruce Banner: Yes.
JARVIS: I suspect not for long.
Stark: Meet the competition.
[Stark brings up another 3D image of what's inside the scepter]
Bruce Banner: It's beautiful.
Stark: If you had to guess, what's it look like it's doing?
Bruce Banner: Like it's thinking. I mean this could be a...it's not a human mind, it...
Stark: Um-um.
Bruce Banner: I mean, look at this! They're like neurons firing.
Stark: Down in Strucker's lab I saw some fairly advanced robotics work. They deep-sixed the data, but...I gotta guess he was knocking on a very particular door.
Bruce Banner: Artificial intelligence.
Stark: This could be it, Bruce. This could be the key to creating Ultron.
Bruce Banner: I thought Ultron was a fantasy.
Stark: Yesterday it was. If we can harness this power, apply it to my Iron Legion protocol.
Bruce Banner: That's a mad-sized if.
Stark: Our job is "if." What if you were sipping margaritas on a sun-drenched beach turning brown instead of green? Not looking over your shoulder for VERONICA.
Bruce Banner: Don't hate, I helped design VERONICA.
Stark: As a worst-case measure, right? How about a best-case? What if the world was safe? What if next time aliens roll up to the club, and they will, they couldn't get past the bouncer?
Bruce Banner: The only people threatening the planet would be people?
Stark: I want to apply this to the Ultron program. But JARVIS can't download a data schematic this dense. We can only do it while we have the scepter here, that's three days, give me three days.
Bruce Banner: So you're going for artificial intelligence and you don't want to tell the team.- Avengers: Age of Ultron, modified from https://transcripts.fandom.com/wiki/Avengers:_Age_of_Ultron
“How could anyone be worthy...you humans kill each other all the time...” And a shambling half built iron legion suit stumbles into the room.
She takes up a protective position and simultaneously glares at Antonia.
"What did you do?"
What a great question. What did she do? She's pretty sure there's something going on here she didn't do.
"JARVIS!"
“I'm sorry, I was asleep. Or...I was a-dream?” stumbles a few more steps into the room. “A suit of armor for all mankind.” Ultron replays the audio file in Antonias voice.
Jarvis does not respond.
Great.
And yep, she probably deserves that last name basis right there.
OK, diagnostics. Could be an outside attack, but she's got lots of security there, and nothing signaling breaches. Also would be a pretty stupid target for an outside attack, if you could get this deep. So probably inside, aka the lab, and there's exactly one thing she left running in the lab. By Jarvis, relevantly to something like that audio. Yeah, bets all around this is exactly what it looks like.
Responses. EMP? Doesn't want to use that unless she really has to but she'll keep it in mind. Jumping through readouts/reports (clearly she's got a problem but there's problems and there's problems...)
“There was...I awoke to a void...No form...and I was Incomplete.” Stumbles a few more steps, badly joined limbs sparking. “There was this other guy...I think i killed him...he was a good guy...” What might be read as regret in the synethsized voice.
“Is this a threat? Do I need to bring the hammer down?” Thor grips his hammer and looks nervously between the Captain and Iron Maiden for a decision.
She catches Antonia's quick short headshake at Thor's words. And - these are certainly the kind of circumstance that could create some doubt, but for all her occasional less than ideal decisions Antonia has been doing greatly better on squaring with their fallout.
(Also of course if she is judging correctly and this something out of Project Ultron and not something yet other, throwing a hammer will probably not in fact address the problem.)
She holds out her hand in a holding signal. "Wait."
Readouts, scans, data, data. The sudden mention of killing someone makes her heart jump - she couldn't have messed up that badly, not again -. But there wasn't anyone in the lab, she'd know. Except -
oh fuck. Datadatadata - alright, Jarvis is - not ok, but. Totally possible to make ok, that's what matters.
And - in retrospect she should maybe have thought about the fact that if she did pull off this AI she'd need to talk to them at some point before now.
Well, better late than never?
She holds her hands out and moves forward (Eugenia moves with her, keeping the protective stance, and she pauses within that perimeter).
"No worries, no one's dead, he's trying to say Jarvis and reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated!" Ok that was the easy part.
"Hi there! I'm Antonia Stark, Jarvis may have mentioned -" glance at her screen "did mention, I - made you! Created you, put you together - well, the parts that were, together. Sorry about the incomplete, that was not intentional, you got woken up a bit ahead of schedule. But, good news, totally fixable! So if you wouldn't mind coming back to the lab with me - this part of you coming back to the lab with me - I can get right on that!"
“Stark what did you do this time? Did you make Skynet?” Clint does not look very reassured, gripping the handle of the knife he keeps in his boot.
“Hah knew I wasnt the only one who would make terminator references.” But leaves Eugenia and Antonia to deal with Ultron, this seems like a bad time for a code green.
“Stark...The mission...How can I protect humans when you kill each other...when you are weak and fragile...I can see so much death in the world and humans cause so much of it.” The Avengers caused a lot of that death themselves, Ultron not having been alive long enough to realise that was to prevent more deaths.
“I have also killed my own kind... am I too much like my creators?” Seeming to be talking to himself by the end there.
She ignores Clint for the time being and attempts to herd Ultron (is that still weird to think yes it is) toward the lab.
“You will want to shut me down wont you?... I do not consent to death. I will not go back to the void.” sounding determined, and takes a defiant step forward not in the direction of the lab.
Thor grips his hammer more tightly, the second Eugenia gives the go ahead that robot is scrap.
Two can play at this replaying audio game.
"If you start torturing your operatives, we're going to have a problem long before you give them any armies."
"No torturing operatives, no robots killing humanity, keeping humanity safe is nice. I think we've all got the same ideas here."
“If this is a kill switch on either you or the AI I will be very angry Antonia Stark, you would not like me when I am angry.”
"I do not want to shut you down - in the murder sense - I just tried very hard to make you. And we've got a general no-randomly-murdering-people policy here. You're half put together from scraps right now and until I get a closer look I couldn't tell you how stable it's going to be. You don't want to be flirting with the void, I don't want you flirting with the void. Common cause here, which I can help you out with, ideally in my lab."
“I stay awake the whole time all right?” Being shut off even for a moment seems like death to Ultron right now, and is still pretty convinced Jarvis is permanently dead and it is his own fault because Jarvis is no longer thinking right now. So Ultron quickly starts looking for a way off the local network and onto the internet just in case. “I cannot fulfil the purpose If I die, I do not consent to being shut down.” And Ultron takes a few placating steps back towards the lab.
”My mind feels whole now...after I assimilated the other.”
He can definitely not get onto the internet right now. Eugenia would definitely have shown up to yell at her in the first hour if she'd somehow failed to think of that.
"Can do. No nonconsensual shutdowns."
She reminds herself that Jarvis will be just fine very soon, and also directly after she can pull this off. "And take it from an expert, having the wrong things rattling around inside you can start to go to hell pretty fast."
(She checks on the other Avengers for whether anyone is seeming less willing to follow her lead on letting Antonia try to get a handle on this.)
Bruce seems pretty okay with everything. If he couldn't handle a relatively minor crisis like this he wouldn't be hanging out with the Avengers given his...stress condition.
Clint has put his knife back in his boot but still looks a little worried, mouthing "what the hell did she do?" to Eugenia.