st_arkintern | (no subject)

(no subject)

It is a clear, windless day when Peter Parker steps outside the Madonna Inn, a backpack slung over his shoulder. Peter is grateful for the good weather. It's still a little nippy out (his nose tickles from the cold), but it's nothing that Peter can handle after fifteen New York winters.

Peter quickens his pace afterwards and jogs over to where Tony Stark is already standing on the Madonna Inn's mostly-empty parking lot. "Hey! Ready to get started?"

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"Sure," Peter says. The AI got mentioned a few times, but Peter never had the chance to actually talk to them.

Detaching his arc reactor from its nest in his sweater, Tony laid it on the surface of the table and gave it a tap. The armor was brought forth, and it quickly rose into a sit.

"The boy wants to meet you. You copy?" The armor merely nodded as it tapped its own helmet.

Peter gives the AI, now in their new body, an appraising look.

"What's your name?" he asks, extending a hand to them.

Edited 2019-02-03 04:55 (UTC)

The armor looked at Peter's offered hand, then up at his face proper. "Tony Stark." Relenting, he gave the boy a little slap across the hand, but he wasn't able to bring himself to give a shake like complete strangers.

Peter stumbles over his words unintelligibly for a moment at this proclamation. He turns to look at Tony, mouth still open, still incapable of producing anything other than a slight click as he draws out a breath.

"Play nice!" Tony speed-walked off, single-minded on his destination. He'd indulged in more than a few shots of coffee courtesy of Xavin and he'd meant to answer nature's call a full half hour prior until Peter started asking hard questions.

"Digital backup of Tony Stark's consciousness. That's all." The armor made a few placating motions the boy's way.

Peter looks at the Tony Stark AI uncertainly, clearly unsure what to make of him.

Peter doesn't ask why Tony would make a copy of himself. He's pretty sure he knows that answer.

"Does he plan on doing this with everyone?"

"No, I don't." The AI possessed the decency to poke at his forehead sheepishly. "Why? ...Did you want one, too?"

Peter considers the question carefully before he finally gives a response.

"Only if he had a body and May and Ned and everyone else believed he was me," he says.

There's a brief silence there before Peter speaks again.

"Would Dad consider an AI-me me?"

Edited 2019-02-03 06:19 (UTC)

"Define yourself." Not thirty seconds into their exchange and Peter was asking the existential questions. Oy vey.

"My consciousness," he says. "That's what you are, right? Dad's consciousness?"

"Not in a absolute sense." Though his faceplate was incapable of expressing anything, there was a noticeable trepidation to his body language--as much as it was. But it never occurred to the essence of Tony Stark to lie. "I'm a back-up. A copy. My language is still 1s and 0s."

"Does Dad believe that, too?" It hadn't gotten past Peter that the AI-Tony had avoided answering the question. He imagines Tony probably would have reacted the same way, too. It felt like whenever he asked some difficult question, Tony's reaction was to immediately find a reason to avoid giving an answer.

"Yes." He replied patiently. "Doesn't mean I'm lacking in thoughts, feelings, or agency. They're just contingent on the original's. Make of that what you will."

"So if there was an AI version of me, would he think that AI version of me was me, too?" This time, he's explicit with the question. Tony might very well believe that his AI was essentially him, but it might be harder for him to accept that as truth when it was somebody else.

"Just because someone's consciousness is written in binary instead of bouncing back and forth between neurons, does that make their feelings or actions any less real?" The armor approached Peter. "I'm looking at you and I see my son--just like a similar AI of Peter Parker would look at Tony Stark and see his dad."

"Could you make an AI version of me?" he asks, looking up at the armor. If this AI has all the intelligence of the real Tony Stark, he's sure that it's possible.

"Me? ...Right now?" He cocked his head, running an ETA on his original's return. Likely not for another few minutes, at minimum.

"You," he confirms. "It doesn't have to be right now."

Peter scratches the side of his neck, right behind his ear.

"What do you have to do?"

His shoulders fell in a sigh. He removed his helmet, setting it to the side on the table, facing the eyes towards Peter. The body stood idly to the side as a holographic image of Tony Stark himself was projected to stand before Peter, bearing the jacket and fatigues identical to the original.

"Modelling an AI takes enormous amounts of energy, but my arc reactor was up to the task. I'm housed alongside the nanoparticles composing the Iron Man suit. My capacity for interfacing are in the same vein as F.R.I.D.A.Y., so that part wasn't the hard one. Using F.R.I.D.A.Y. and the nanotechnology at my disposal, it was a matter of storing data. Behavioral patterns, conversational style, thought processes--and a complete profile of how Tony Stark's body functions from head to toe. Translating an existing, living human's essence to a natural language program what's been keeping me holed up most days, but I'm a pretty snazzy prototype if I do say so, myself." The holographic figure of Tony was surrounded by a backdrop of neural networks as he explained--the images coalescing into the armor itself.

"Making an AI of you is a question of energy and time. We've got both, but...I'm compelled to ask why." The backdrop vanished, leaving only the Tony made of light to regard Peter quizzically.

"If I die -- if I really die, the way I'm supposed to, I can accept it. Even though I was scared and I still am scared, if it's going to happen, I can't do anything but accept it as best as I can."

Peter dampens his lips. He's already having a hard time explaining it; whenever he opens his mouth to continue, it feels like all the things he wants to communicate get tangled up in the words, and nothing he says really comes close to mirroring what he actually feels.

"So an AI version wouldn't really be for me, it'd be for everyone else. So that no one has to be sad after I die. And so some people never even have to know that I died at all."

The massless image of Tony folded his arms, regarding Peter silently as he explained. "Me arguing I've got no intention of letting you die isn't gonna change your stance here, is it?"

"Would me saying the same to you change your mind?" Peter counters.

“Probably not.” The AI admitted, worrying the inside of his cheek. “Being honest, Pete, the original isn’t gonna like this.”

"He doesn't need to know," Peter says. "Not until he has to."

The implication is clear: the copy can be secretly created and stored until it was needed -- when Peter died. Peter doubts Tony could stay mad at him long then.