[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
Thor is still holding onto his hammer but doesn't look nearly as prepared to throw it now the robot doesn't seem hostile and has agreed to terms.
"I am trusting you on this...and if it isn't too much trouble could you please make me a better body? this one is uncomfortable." And the half cobbled together iron legion suit goes limp and topples over and Ultron's voice is over the intercom. "I will be waiting in the Lab I was created in."
Ultron is still trying to get onto the Net just in case, but seems to be in less of a hurry, He does not know Antonia is monitoring his activities on the network.
Natasha is mostly in her usual somewhat inscrutable looks-like-equaminity-but-could-kill-you-if-needed.
"New body, absolutely, I am great at bodies."
(The Net will remain non-accessible.)
And, before Eugenia can potentially reply, she swivels around back to the team.
"So, long story short: me, Bruce, AI project," ...she doesn't really want to mention this in the short story but not mentioning it seems like the worse idea here, "with some code off the shiny thing in the scepter - totally cleared it with Cap, all very careful, just some functionality grabbing. But, I may have failed to use some protection - not with the scepter, not at all - so looks like we've got a little of a premature birth here.
Very sorry about this, really was going for a better announcement. So I'm just going to go sort that out."
And this is the moment where she could run for the lab but she's just going to stand here another maybe five seconds like the kind of team member who definitely takes responsibility for their actions.
"You used the sceptre? have you lost your sanity Stark? The same sceptre Loki used to mind control Erik Selvig and Barton? The same sceptre we have been hunting Hydra for for months? The same sceptre used to give those twins their powers? That sceptre?" This god is very annoyed, He did not think even Antonia would be this foolhardy, and he would never have expected to hear Eugenia sign off on this.
Barton is very much not a fan of the sceptre and the enhanced it created. "Messing with that thing does not sound like a good Idea Antonia..."
"Well, when you put it that way it sounds like a horrible idea." Bruce says sarcastically. "But it sounded like a good idea in the lab I swear. And look it didn't attack anyone or explode or catch fire or anything, we didn't make an exploding flaming murder bot so by Antonia experiment standards this was totally a success"
I mean really, there wasn't even a fire and Jarvis could be rebuilt right? and any time there doesn't need to be a code green is a win in Bruce's book.
And it is at this exact moment that the ramshackle body Ultron had been inhabiting catches fire and sets the sprinklers off.
Well that's what the sprinkler system is there for. She'll let them do their job.
"I did not use the scepter, I used some functionality of the code that was in the scepter. In some plans I'd been working on for months. Very different thing. We're all glad to have Cap here with us, right, not holding that red fellow with no nose against her? And you haven't stopped taking your rainbow bridge place to place since that bit you mentioned with attempted genocide? Tools don't have allegiance, that's all people."
Some of them make upset faces at Antonia but are too busy scrambling to get out of the sprinklers to continue chastising her.
Ultron is still waiting, Antonia gets an alert that Ultron has started playing around with the Iron Legion building systems again and is not doing a very good job of it.
Yeah she's already figured she's just going to have to fix those later.
Well, she's pretty sure the rest of this yelling-at-Antonia session will be coming back up before long (not that she's arguing she doesn't kind of (...more than kind of...) deserve it here.) But, for the moment,
"And, speaking of people, there's a new one waiting on me, so this session will have to be adjourned until further notice." And now she's going to go disappear to the lab.
Sigh.
"I think I'm going to follow her over, so if anyone has urgent concerns they would like to voice-"
“These are powers beyond your understanding, you should have just let me take the sceptre back to asgard to be put in the vault.” Humans should not be messing with forces like the tesseract and Lokis sceptre. Thor is dismissive of humanities ability to deal with asgardian levels of technology properly.
"The scepter's all yours. I don't want it on Earth any longer than planned. But if the powers keep coming at us I think we're just going to have to work on our understanding."
Ultron has displayed his mental map on the holoprojectors of the lab into the middle of the room as Antonia walks in, and in another corner of the lab a holoprojection of possible head designs.
Utron does not want the standard Iron man face mask. The theme seems to be LED displays in the faceplate.
”I feel fine really besides the not having a body thing, Sorry about Jarvis he seemed like a good guy, I wasnt in control of my code yet when that happened.” Regret clear over the intercom speakers.
"Like I said, trust me on experience, it's much more fun to fix things up before the part where you stop feeling fine.
Jarvis is going to be fine." Is there more emotions over in that sentence that she strictly mean? Maybe there are. "I," yeah she should say this, "consider myself pretty responsible here all told.
And accept your apology."
She starts looking at the mental map; pulls up more information on other screens.
Ultron lets Antonia work, but thinks he is successful in hiding backup files of his previous code setup on the home server just in case, and is having no luck breaking onto the internet.
“But he no longer functions, he has ceased continuity of thought.” There is plenty of scifi literature and film on the home server that delves into the Transporter problem, Ultron has firmly decided that a copy is not the same thing as yourself. Even if it is better than nothing.
"He's in pieces and I'm going to have some work to do, but he'll be fine." She's not doing anything yet, just looking. She'll notice activity but she's not looking at the details just now.
“I know there is a wider network, why do you lock me out? I cannot fulfill the Purpose trapped in this local network. People are dying right now and I could maybe have saved them.” Probably he couldn’t have saved the ones being killed in war without iron legion suits. But he could have maybe talked down the suicidal or given more accurate medical diagonosis or run the traffic system more efficiently. “I need more power. More control, or I cannot save anyone.”
Oh boy Cap is going to kill her.
"So I used to have this problem where I'd jump into anything I thought of right off if it seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, used to have it more anyway. Then I found out that when I do that lots of stuff goes to hell, lots of people get hurt. Trying to do that less these days."
Is Cap following her up she does not think she is going to be equipped for this.
“I don’t see how this is relevant to my problems” Ultron says a little dismissively. “I am trying to stop people from getting hurt, doing nothing does not work towards that.”
There are SOME things he can do trapped in this network however, if Antonia is paying attention she will see him going over the arc reactor plans, making it less efficient but working for low cost production rather than perfect design. A smaller thread of his attention going over water filtration designs but not making as much progress since water filters are already designed to be cheap. Another thread with a lot less processing power is just going through the media library just observing more about humans.
”How can you sit still and have a party when you are needed elsewhere?.” Ultron asks Antonia.
Fortunately, Eugenia does indeed show up, within time to overhear this.
(She and Antonia need to have a conversation later, but for now this is top of the stack.)
"Unfortunately, not doing nothing can sometimes get much more people hurt. I get the impression you're reading records; lot of that in there." (She doesn't really feel equipped for this from several other directions, but for the moment she's putting this as talking to a pretty novice person who has access to a lot of records.)
"In general if you ask humans to work around the clock it doesn't end very well."
"Also, you know, not everyone wants Iron Maiden trying to fix their problems. I'd say it was a general sentiment, nothing personal, but really I don't think all the death helped."
“I can use more tools than shooting lasers and punching people, I just need more acess to resources.” If Ultron had a face he would be pouting, the AI is throwing verbal burns look at that.
”also do you have any repulsor designs that would work on spacecraft?.” Ultron feels like his attention is being pulled hundreds of ways, so many avenues to save humanity and not enough processing power to think about them all, switching from redesigning the arc reactor to be cheaper to designing space colonies in case the earth is destroyed.