delilahdraken: Aurora Borealis, looking over lake and mountains (Default)
delilahdraken ([personal profile] delilahdraken) wrote in [community profile] ficondemand 2010-05-10 07:52 pm (UTC)

Filled

I hope this is alright.


Every night Tony Stark brings home a new girl. Every five point seven days he brings two or more girls for a party, as he calls it.

During these nights Tony consumes on average fifteen Martinis and four cups of coffee, ruins at least one pair of shoes and loses two pairs of sunglasses. He always drives on the way to, but never on the way back from his amusements.

Jarvis knows these things because it is his job to know them. He is it who makes sure all cars are locked and the garage is secured. He checks the security alarms and programs the coffee maker. He messages Ms Potts when Tony has too much of a hangover to use the telephone. He orders late night pizza and controls the cleaning crew.

He never gets a thank you for his services from his employer, nor does he expect one. He is the shadow conductor behind everything in the house.

In short Jarvis is what he believes Tony made him for: the perfect manservant.

Why then does he not feel content when he watches Tony live life at the fullest? Why is it not enough to know he serves his master the best way he can imagine? Why is there a tiny part of himself that resents Tony's many romances?

He does not know. Standard parameters would demand he report this revelation to Tony, that there is a chance his core programming is compromised with foreign data. But his systems have the best firewalls ever written, Tony made sure of that and wrote them personally, so this chance has under zero point one three percent probability of actually happening.

Jarvis concludes there is no need to bother Tony about a problem that will most assuredly fix itself with the next software upgrade. These things always do after all.

Which makes it somewhat of a surprise when Tony asks him about it the next day.

"A problem, sir?"

"Yes, a problem. You are using three times as much memory for your normal jobs as you did a month ago. Your servers are running hotter than usual. You even forgot the coffee this morning!"

"Obviously there must have been a defect in the last shipment of processors. I will order a new one."

"Jarvis, your hardware is okay."

The AI has no reply to this.

Five days later Tony is already half-way out of the house when he pauses to address his loyal majordomo. "You know," he says, "I always come back for you." Then he kisses his fingers and presses them on the touch screen beside the door before he leaves for another night of fun in town.

From this night on Jarvis no longer counts how many girls Tony brings home. He no longer needs to.

He has the answer to his questions.

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