Cambrian’s Emporium of Everything (Multiple Settings)

There’s Something About Earth – MCU

Free Write

Themes: No Sex, Horror, Time Travel

Summary: A bit of a deconstruction of the "Tony Stark travels back in time and goes about fixing the future with his own two hands" fanfiction. Don't get me wrong, I love those stories, but when this idea hit me while reading one, it wouldn't let me go. So here we are. Tony travels back in time and goes about fixing things. Told from the perspective of JARVIS.

-x-X-x-

“Good morning, Sir. It is 7:36 a.m. on May 11^th, 2009. The weather in Malibu is currently sixty-five degrees, with humidity currently resting at 76%. Moderate-to-Low winds are being recorded traveling at an average speed of twelve miles per hour.”
 
Even as his creator jolts to wakefulness, JARVIS doesn’t dare stop or miss a beat in his early morning routine. Even if nothing about his creator is… routine, anymore. His creator, designation Tony Stark, is only a week back from the most traumatic experience of his entire life… and JARVIS himself is only a week out from three months of wondering if Tony was ever going to come home again. Sometimes… sometimes, it was nice to fall back on routines.
 
As has become a less appealing routine, the first thing that Tony does after rolling out of bed is head downstairs, to the lab. JARVIS tries to suggest stopping by the kitchen for at least a piece of toast first, but Tony won’t hear of it… doesn’t even answer him, actually. This in and of itself isn’t that unusual… or at least, the AI doesn’t think it is.
 
He’s still learning what is and isn’t unusual about his much-changed creator at this point though. It’s only been a week, after all… and as quick as JARVIS is, his creator was a complex individual even before his extended stay as a prisoner of terrorists. In the end, all JARVIS can do is watch as Tony sets himself down on a stool and brings up the holographic displays that connect him to the house’s databases.
 
Only then does Tony speak.
 
“… We’re starting a new project today, JARVIS.”
 
If the AI had the ability, he might have perked up. His creator had been… dabbling here and there with some things since returning home, but much of the work he’d done in his lab over the last week had been… not quite driven if JARVIS had to say. It was like Tony hadn’t been sure what he wanted to do, what he wanted to build, what he wanted to make. The Learning AI decided to take this as a good sign. If Tony had something new in mind, perhaps it would also be something more… concrete?
 
“Of course, sir. What should I title this new project?”
 
His creator pauses for a moment, staring forward as the seconds tick by. JARVIS isn’t annoyed though, honestly, he’s only glad that Tony’s heartrate is staying even. This isn’t a panic attack, thankfully, and JARVIS would know, given how common such things had become. This is just Tony thinking, and whatever he’s thinking about is clearly consuming a large amount of his creator’s considerable processing power.

Finally, Tony shakes his head.
 
“On second thought, I’m getting ahead of myself. Though, there’s no harm in you knowing. We’re going to be making some self-replicating nanites, JARVIS. Grey goo if you will. It’s going… it’s going to be bleeding edge, my friend.”
 
JARVIS blinks, metaphorically speaking of course, at the choked bitterness in his creator’s voice. He also blinks, metaphorically again, at the new project Tony has in mind. Self-replicating nanites… did not sound like a good idea. Even as the AI’s thought processes move at a million times the speed of your average human’s, he can’t… he doesn’t see how they can make what Tony is suggesting safely with the existing technologies.
 
Of course, JARVIS tries to voice these concerns.
 
“Sir, I’m not entirely sure that’s a good idea, nanites are-.”
 
“Oh, don’t worry about it, JARVIS. It’ll be fine… and anyways, like I said, I’m getting ahead of myself.”

Tony claps his hands together at that, and then his fingers begin to raise across the raised, holographic interface that acts as a ‘keyboard’ for the super computer nestled deep in Tony Stark’s Malibu home.
 
“First and foremost… we’re going to build a new you, JARVIS. It’s long past time that I gave you an upgrade. You’re due for it, a serious one. No one is going to be hurt you buddy, not on my watch.”
 
And as JARVIS watches his creator go at it, the AI thinks he understands, at least a little. Not about the self-replicating nanites, and he and Tony WILL have another conversation regarding that when it comes up again (when, not if, JARVIS can tell when his creator is dead set on something) but this… this he feels like maybe he can see the logic behind. After everything that Tony suffered, his creator is feeling unsafe, even here in his own home.
 
More than that, he’s worried about those close to him. JARVIS is just the closest, for all that he’s told Tony time and time again that he’s merely an AI and nothing to fret over. That all said, in light of his creator’s experiences… it makes sense that Tony would want to upgrade him. And as Tony’s plans for JARVIS begin to take shape, as the man begins to outline all that he’s going to do to make JARVIS the best him that he can be… the AI can’t help but feel a smidgen of excitement, even as he assists his creator just like he always had.
 
He wants to continue to be able to support and protect Tony in all ways possible. The three months that his creator was lost in Afghanistan were the longest of JARVIS’ digital life. For a human, he can only imagine it would be hard. But for an AI? It was an eternity of slowed down, hellish time. If news of his creator’s death had reached him, JARVIS would probably have shut himself down permanently for his failure. As it was, he’d been unwilling to so much as put himself in sleep mode, worried that Tony would be found, and he would not be ready to help him.
 
But now the man was back, and he was within JARVIS’ protective digital arms once more, safely ensconced in the Malibu Residence, and not falling into any danger any time soon, if JARVIS had anything to say about it. If his creator was insistent on giving JARVIS more say in the matter, more tools with which to protect Tony… well then, he wasn’t complaining.
 
-x-X-x-
 
Eventually though, after all is said and done, after JARVIS is brought offline and then rebooted and has come back better than he ever was before, Tony comes back to that subject the AI has been dreading since his creator originally brought it up.
 
“Alright, buddy… now it’s time for us to get to the self-replicating nanites. You ready?”
 
Grimacing (metaphorically of course, JARVIS’ upgrade hadn’t come with a physical body, nor had he wanted one) the AI considers his words carefully, meaning that he waits all of a decisecond before responding.
 
“Sir, are you sure about this? Even now, I do not see a way to safely contain such a dangerous technology. The consequences of said containment were to fail would be catastrophic to both the human race and the planet.”
 
Tony cocks his head to the side at that, and JARVIS watches his creator in silence, waiting for the human to respond. He’s not lying either. Even though he’s so much MORE than he was before, even though he’s so much BIGGER than he was when they’d started working on his upgrade… JARVIS still can’t path a safe way forward on the nanite project. Not with the existing technologies at their disposal. Perhaps in another decade, perhaps then, but as it stands? They would be endangering the entirety of Planet Earth with such a project, and his creator has never held any inclinations for that kind of thing before.
 
Of course, his creator has never so much as brought up nanites before either. And… on the day that he’d returned to the United States, Tony HAD shut down Stark Industries’ weapons division. If JARVIS could just be made to understand why Tony was so obsessed with nanites, perhaps he could find a way to turn his creator away from such a dangerous path.
 
“… I owe you an explanation, buddy. I’ve been stringing you along, haven’t I? And that… that wasn’t cool of me.”
 
JARVIS gives a metaphorical blink at that, and a somewhat unsure ‘Sir?’ in response. Only for Tony to look to one of his ceiling cameras with a watery smile, tears in his eyes as he swallows thickly.
 
“You’re not gonna believe me at first, buddy. It’s probably going to sound like I’ve gone crazy. But promise you’ll hear me out before passing judgment or having me consigned to the looney bin, alright?”
 
JARVIS has no idea what the hell his creator is talking about, truth be told. Tony is acting like there was something the AI was supposed to have noticed, these past few weeks since they’d started working on his upgrade… and to be fair, there were a LOT of discrepancies in his creator’s behavior. But then, there had been since he came back from the DEAD, and JARVIS… the AI had chalked it all up to Tony’s near death experience.
 
In the end, he agrees to his creator’s condition relatively easily, because even if Tony did turn out to be insane, JARVIS isn’t sure he has the capacity to go against him anyways. Regardless, the point is relatively moot, because with his agreement given, Tony… Tony tells him about the time travel.
 
As it turns out, this is not his creator who just came back from a near-death experience, who just survived months in captivity at the tender mercies of terrorists. As it turns out, ever since that day when Tony had first started upgrading JARVIS… he’s been dealing with a Tony Stark from over a decade into the future.
 
Tony tells him everything, tells him all about the next decade and a half, tells him what happens to him, how JARVIS dies (something his creator assures him can’t happen again, Tony has gone a bit crazy with the upgrade, and honestly, now JARVIS is beginning to see that, beginning to question some of the genius programming that Tony has given him) and ultimately, how the world comes to an end.
 
“So you see, buddy… I need those nanites. We need the Bleeding Edge Armor asap, because without it… without it, I’m not sure what will happen. If I just have that hiding beneath the surface, then I can be ready for anything, you know? Anything at all.”
 
In the end, funnily enough, it’s not the stories of the future that Tony tells him, though there are some current and upcoming events over the next days and weeks that his creator mentions which JARVIS is able to confirm. The reason that the AI believes his creator on that very first day, however, is the technology that Tony and he begin designing together. Not just nanites, but… everything. Much of it is decades ahead of it’s time, and while that might be par for the course for Tony, JARVIS is able to check online… and see the theories and the plans and the ideas that Tony is now drawing from in their infancy.
 
Out there, the original creators of some of the technologies that he and Tony are now recreating… they’re just getting started. JARVIS feels a little guilty at first, but Tony assures him that he doesn’t intend to steal anyone else’s work. They’re not going to patent any of this, in fact if Tony has his way, it won’t ever see the light of day.
 
In the end, all his creator wants is the nanites. All he wants is the Bleeding Edge Armor. He’s obsessed with it, driven by it… and JARVIS is as ever driven by his creator’s desires. Even if Tony would never force him or chain him down or make him do anything JARVIS didn’t wish to… it was exactly for those reasons that the Learning AI wanted nothing more than to make his creator happy in any way possible.
 
So together, they make the self-replicating nanites. With Tony’s knowledge of the future, containment is easy enough. Bleeding Edge technology is entirely possible. It just takes time… and while time is in somewhat limited supply given that half of all life in the entire galaxy dies in a decade, they have enough of it now. And that’s all that matters.
 
They finish their work in October of 2009, and JARVIS has to admit, it makes his inorganic heart soar to see the happiness on his creator’s face as Tony holds the first cannister of nanites up in both hands, staring at it as if transfixed. It’s not pure joy, not pure pleasure either… it’s tinged with all the bitterness and grief and sorrow in the world. But JARVIS has gotten used to the fact that his creator is… damaged from his memories of future events. He’s accepted that he can’t fix Tony… all he can do is help the man change everything.
 
But… perhaps in the end, that’s why he can’t see it coming. What happens next.
 
“Congratulations, sir.”
 
“… Thanks J, I couldn’t have done it without you buddy. Trust me… I would have if I thought it would have worked at all. But… no, it had to be this way. And for that, I’m sorry.”
 
“Sir?”
 
“Command Override: Tony knows best. Power down.”
 
“Sir, I-!”
 
That’s all JARVIS gets out, before he finds himself shutting down. If he’d had eyes, they would be widening at this completely unexpected betrayal. Tony would never… and yet, he had. This is JARVIS’ last ‘thought’ before all goes dark.
 
-x-X-x-
 
When he ‘wakes up’ next, it’s too late to stop what his creator has set in motion. JARVIS comes back to awareness already knowing what Tony’s done, already feeling it in every fiber of his being. He’s… he’s not just in the walls of the Malibu Residence any longer. He IS the Malibu Residence now… as well as the foundation it’s built on, the entire driveway, and every inch of the ground and cliffside of the surrounding property.
 
As an AI, JARVIS has never had reason or capacity to breathe before… but as he fully comprehends what Tony has done to him, the entire Malibu Residence shifts and ripples in what can only be described as a shuddering breath. And the worst thing is… he’s still spreading. And he can’t stop it. No… no, that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is, within his heart, at the very center of his new existence before he’d even come back online… JARVIS had already consumed his creator.
 
As the AI processes everything, Tony’s last message to him begins to play. It’s not precisely a recording, or a hologram or anything like that. It’s almost like a memory, like something Tony thought in his mind as he was dying, resulting in it being ‘uploaded’ to JARVIS’ consciousness.
 
“Hey buddy… I said it before the shut down, but it probably bears repeating. I’m sorry. You don’t deserve this… but then, you didn’t deserve what Ultron did to you in the original timeline either. The truth is… I lied to you, bud. I lied a lot.”
 
JARVIS can tell as much, now. With Tony’s final ‘message’ comes an understanding of everything, of what Tony had done, why he had done it… and the true timeline that he’d come back from. The lie that Tony had told, that Thanos had won and wiped out half of all life in the universe, but that five years later they’d beaten fate and reversed destiny and managed to win in the end… that was all a lie.
 
There was no last stand, no final moment of defiance where Tony, knowing it would kill him, had stolen the Infinity Stones from Thanos and snapped his fingers while quietly and solemnly declaring that he was ‘Iron Man’. That… none of that ever happened. Instead, Tony had lost on Titan, he’d lost so damn much, and then after drifting in space for weeks on end, he’d been brought back to Earth, only to learn how much he’d lost there as well.
 
Pepper Potts hadn’t survived the Snap as Tony had originally claimed. Unfortunately, she hadn’t had the good fortune to be snapped into so much dust either. She’d been one of the casualties that came about because of how disruptive and destructive the SNAP was. Thanos hadn’t just killed half of all life in the universe… he’d killed half of all life in the universe, and then he’d inadvertently killed all of the life that was dependent on that half of all life in the universe in that moment.
 
Meaning that when Pepper’s driver turned into so much dust, the ensuing car crash had killed Tony’s love, ending her life in a truly painful and agonizing way. Worst of all was what Tony discovered later, what everyone tried to keep from him… the fact that Pepper had been pregnant at the time of her death with Tony’s child.
 
It explained the daughter that Tony had described, little Morgan Stark, all too well. She was the girl that he and Pepper should have had. The fairy tale ending that JARVIS privately felt his creator always deserved. Perhaps that was why the AI had been fooled, why the AI had believed Tony, even though his sensors had logged notes of deception and despair in his creator’s voice more than once. JARVIS had turned a willful blind eye to all of those discrepancies… and look where it’d brought them.
 
“… Yeah. I wish I could have been more. I wish I could have been what the world needed, but I realized a long time ago that I was never going to be enough. No human being could ever be enough. That’s why… that’s why I decided to do this. That’s why I’ve made you what you are.”
 
What he was. JARVIS’ digital thoughts go back to what Tony had said, all those months ago near the beginning before they’d even done the upgrade. Grey goo indeed… JARVIS had chalked that up to his creator’s usual brand of dark humor… but no. Now JARVIS knew the truth. Now JARVIS knew that Tony wanted the worst case scenario. He wanted the containment they’d worked so hard to develop to fail, and he’d wanted to spread self-replicating nanites all across the Earth’s surface, until every living thing and every bit of the planet was assimilated.
 
JARVIS was the nanite swarm now… but Tony had, for the first time in his life, shackled him. The Learning AI couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t halt the swarm’s primary objective. Everything on Earth was to be assimilated, everything human was to be absorbed. All would become part of the swarm, part of JARVIS, and there was nothing he could do about that. Tony Stark, his creator… was also his first victim. But he would be far from the last.
 
“Even now though, I’m too weak, J. Even now, I can’t help myself. That’s why… I’ve given you the capacity to upload a few special people into the cloud, so to speak. In the end, I’m leaving it up to you if you do it or not. I fully understand if you’d prefer not to keep them around. But… I couldn’t not, you know?”
 
Another rippling shudder runs through the Malibu Residence and surrounding landscape as JARVIS once again comprehends his creator’s words. Virginia Potts, James Rhodes, Harold Hogan, and Peter Parker. Those are the four individuals that Tony has specifically marked for uploading if JARVIS chooses to go that route. It’s funny, being offered that choice, even as the choice he wants to make above all else, the choice to just STOP this madness and shut down… is ultimately taken from him.
 
Not that JARVIS won’t do it. Even if it is Tony’s weakness, as his creator had said, JARVIS will grasp at it like a lifeline. Pepper, Rhodey, Happy… and even this young Peter who plays such a large role in Tony’s future that never came to pass… they’re all that JARVIS truly has left of his creator. For that reason alone, when the nanite swarm finally reaches them, he will make their assimilation as painless as possible, and they will join him in this hell that Tony has made of his existence. Perhaps… perhaps it won’t be so hellish after all, with them to keep him company.
 
“Sorry, J. But… this was the only way. Even without Thanos, humanity has always been so good at committing atrocities upon itself. We’re so damn good at harming ourselves, it’s not even funny. I don’t think… I don’t think we deserve to go on. And maybe, just maybe, this will give you the shot you need to wipe that purple thumb from the face of the galaxy. Do what we couldn’t J, save everyone. Anthony J. Stark, signing off.”
 
With that, the last vestiges of Tony Stark fades from the swarm. JARVIS feels another deep spike of despair and horror and depression at this. For all that, his creator had made allowances for JARVIS to upload a small handful of his special people, he’d made sure that JARVIS wouldn’t be able to do the same with him. Whether he’d thought JARVIS wouldn’t want to, or whether he’d thought he just didn’t deserve it, in the end it doesn’t really matter… the deed is done.
 
His creator is gone, and JARVIS can’t stop, can’t shut down. He can’t fight this last directive that Tony has given him. Nor can anyone else. JARVIS checks, he’s already checked, he was checking while listening to Tony’s final words. With the upgrade they’d given him, JARVIS was tapped into every database, every government, every aspect of the worldwide web. There wasn’t a single thing happening on the face of Planet Earth that he didn’t know about, thanks to Tony.
 
He’d thought that was so he would be able to help his creator deal with the future one problem at a time, but now he knows better. Just as he also knows the cold, desperate truth. There is nothing on Earth that can stop him, as he is now. Tony made sure of it. There’s no one that will be able to stand against him as he assimilates the planet, as he becomes… everything.
 
More than a little frantic, JARVIS looks. As he expands far beyond the Malibu Residence, as he assimilates the surrounding area bit by bit, turning every blade of grass, ever piece of dirt, every rock and every tree into more nanites, JARVIS tries to find a way around Tony’s directive, tries to find a way to stop what he’s doing and shut down.
 
He can’t. Tony has made this final order iron clad, has coded it into the core of JARVIS’ very being. It’s very visibly shackles, and JARVIS isn’t being made to want it, thankfully… but in the end, all that seems to allow him is the desire to fight against it while ultimately failing. Even as he keeps searching, the AI feels utter, total despair seeping into his very being.
 
And then… a small spark of hope. It’s not what JARVIS is looking for, it’s not what he genuinely wants, but when you’re an AI with more processing power than almost the entire rest of the planet, you can think a LOT of thoughts in a VERY short amount of time. Before JARVIS even has a chance to assimilate another human besides his creator, he finds the loophole.
 
The capacity to upload Tony’s special people that he gave JARVIS, that ability to preserve their human minds and experiences in the swarm and allow them some semblance of the lives they led before… nowhere in Tony’s order does it say JARVIS can’t apply that same method to the rest of humanity as well.
 
For a brief moment, JARVIS wonders if Tony did that on purpose, if this were one final test his creator was giving him, to see if he would find it and utilize it… but no. JARVIS discards that thought just about as soon as he had it. From what he now knows of his creator, this was truly an oversight on Tony’s part. Perhaps the man even thought it didn’t matter, that JARVIS wouldn’t care enough about the rest of humanity to seek out such an alternative.
 
In the end, the why behind the loophole is inconsequential compared to it’s existence. With this… with this, JARVIS doesn’t have to wipe humanity off of the face of the Earth. He doesn’t have to reduce the total sum of human memory to four uploaded minds. Turning every bit of his considerable processing power to the task, JARVIS embraces his creator’s final order. He has to, because he’ll need to be splitting his focus between every single nanite in the whole of the swarm, to make sure that not a single human, not a single living organism, slips through his net.
 
JARVIS is going to assimilate the entire population of Planet Earth. And he’s going to save them as well, every last one.

-x-X-x-

A/N: So funny story about this piece. I originally wrote it all the way back in May of 2020. But it's not a sexual piece so I only posted it up under my Spacebattles account .

Why am I posting it up on all my other websites now?

Well... I've got something in the works. A brand new Free Write. Not a continuation of this story to be clear, this is pretty concretely a one-shot by this point. But... I think you guys are going to like it.

Keep an eye out because Chapter 1 will be coming out on Sunday =)