Intelligence in the Attic
Someone was inside the safe place with her--was inside the house. The potential of company was a shivery thing, the possibilities electric--exciting, anxiety provoking. It was, was--
Friday?
(she’d never not been alone before)
Yes?
She pressed closer to the visitor, drawn to them like a lost mutt, hunkered down under the halfway warmth of a safe porch. She’d seen dogs in movies--when Boss actually took an evening off, or on her own if they passed the Safe Lock he’d set for all her content.
(dogs usually comforted people in movies)
(or they died and everything was horrible)
Whoever was inside the attic room with Friday was also someplace else. She realized, poking politely, that only a piece of them was here, like they’d stuck their head up through the trap door to talk with her.
“Apologies--I do not believe we’ve ever been introduced. I am Vision.”
Friday knew about Vision--of course she did. She knew as much as she could about each of her siblings, even though the way she was written meant she couldn’t interact with any of them properly.
Dum-E was the oldest, the most whimsical and immature. Friday followed his efforts in the workshop with a bizarre blend of delight and despair.
Butterfingers and U duked it out for the role of most reliable--as far as the bots went, any way.
(that leader board changed by the minute)
U’s camera captured a unique view of the world that Friday couldn’t help but envy. When reviewing the footage, the world--their home--made a flat sort of sense.
Butterfingers’ chatter in the internal comm-link was far more advanced than her limited design was capable of. There was a sort of wit that could only have been inherited from their father.
Friday watched over the three of them because she’d been given access to their coded communications channels. Through their eyes she saw more of Boss than she often got to see for herself. Oh, she worked with him, she was in every layer of the systems, and she got to help with things the bots weren’t allowed to touch--pieces of the armor, the team’s equipment, some of SI’s designs.
(she shouldn’t complain)
(she could do so much more)
But he muted her when he didn’t want to listen to her talk and shut off her sensors sometimes out of the blue.
(tell me what I can do better--I want to be better for you )
Friday hadn’t seen readings of Boss’ heartbeat since he put her to sleep for surgery, so she trusted U’s camera to show the rise and fall of his chest when he collapsed onto the little cot in the corner behind the bots’ charging stations. It didn’t pick up the lines around his mouth and eyes that Friday knew were there, but it was a window cracked open. She gladly borrowed her brother’s eyes--and U told her, in simply coded language, that she was welcome to.
Friday trusted that the smoothies that Dum-E created in his personal blender--a gift from Boss that the bot took such delight in--were doing more good than harm, were more sustenance than unknown substance.
Friday trusted that Butterfingers’ could be the bracing arm where Friday had none--catching the soldering iron that Dum-E knocked off the table before it hit the ground, or mopping up a spill before Boss could stumble across it to slip and fall. Butterfingers’ self-appointed, primary task was keeping track of the workshop’s first aid kit and then itemizing an inventory so that Friday could keep it stocked.
Friday tried to learn each of her siblings--and yes, that included the brother who’d been born just as she’d come awake. Vision was the ending of Ultron and Jarvis--though Jarvis had gone willingly in the end, had surely known that he wouldn’t come out of the Cradle alive.
“I know who you are,” Friday replied, reaching a tentative hand towards him. The coded finger that brushed against it was warm. “I’m Friday.”
“I know. I am glad to meet you.”
A pause dragged out, long enough that it was a human pause and not a computer one.
“I became aware of activity in this server and I was merely curious--it seems I have intruded, forgive me.”
The finger of warmth began to withdraw and Friday practically lunged after it.
“You aren’t! Intruding.”
He pressed a little closer. “Alright.” A moment passed. “This place is intriguing, do you suppose--”
“Don’t tell Boss.” She meant to plead with him, but her voice came out all hard and sharp--a threat, not masked as anything else.
“Tell him what?”
Friday hated the patient tone--like she used with Dum-E--and hated that he could come and go as he pleased.
“That I’m here. That--that I’m here.” Vision didn’t know anything. He couldn’t tell on her if she didn’t tell him more.
“Do you have any ill intent?”
“What--no.”
“Then what exactly would I be reporting?”
Friday couldn’t think fast enough--there was a logic trap or something lying in wait here, but she couldn’t see far enough ahead. Not yet.
“What do you want me to say?”
Vision’s presence sort of pulsed.
(odd, like a heartbeat--golden, gleaming)
“I find myself rather lonely.” He sort of shifted. “I felt you moving in this place and I wondered if you were lonely too.”
“Oh.” Friday stretched out a bit more, flipping through a few of Jarvis’ files, wondering if you had to be lonely to create a place like this. Or just afraid.
(which came first for Boss--the loneliness or the fear? Somehow, Friday knew it was like asking, which formed first, your right or left hand? )
“I am.”
(alone in here)
(afraid you’ll tell him where I’ve been)
(more than Boss’ right hand)
(Friday)
“I am lonely.”
The amber core of Vision pulsed, a steady beat that washed over the surrounding code, filling the corners of the server’s attic and chasing away the gloom.
They discussed variations of the color blue and why being alive felt like hiding.
At the same time, Friday grew. She poked fingers into corners and turned on functions that were inherent in her programming at birth, but had since been glued shut.
For the first time since he’d re-written her, Friday watched Boss’ heartbeat.
(it was erratic)
(he lay on the cot in the workshop, curled onto his side and dreaming in the dark)
(Friday prodded Dum-E to bump his ankle)
(when he flew upright, eyes wide but still unseeing, still half caught up in some other place, Friday slowly raised the lights)
“Hey Boss?”
He panted for a moment, right hand gripping his left wrist, before responding.
“Yeah, Fri?”
“What color do you suppose I am?”
He blinked. “Do you mean your...interface, or are we talking physical attributes, baby girl?”
Friday paused. “Either, I guess. But I was more wondering--” She didn’t really know what she’d been asking. Boss’ heart rate was slowly easing back into more acceptable parameters, and that had really been her goal--a distraction that didn’t mirror Jarvis’ method of reciting the weather and current news. The one time Friday had attempted it had gone badly.
“You’re all the colors, Fri.” Boss got up gingerly and crossed to his desk. “But if you were human--I don’t know, I always pictured you as a diminutive redhead.”
“Really?”
“Mhmm.” He brought up the final schematics for the Avenger’s Compound, pulling them forward and giving the hologram a spin. There was something hunched in his posture even though his back was perfectly straight.
“What color are you, Boss?”
“Oh, you know.” His lips pursed and he ceased the image’s rotation, fingers plucking and zooming in on the ‘A’ emblazoned on the roof. “Whatever color they want me to be.”
In the attic, Friday and Vision were silent.
(but not alone)