Chapter 30 - (Spoiler)

"What the fuck are you bringing me into Fury?" I ask, looking at the short redhead chick in the red corset.

"Calm down kid, it's not that bad."

"I don't know Fury, bringing the daughter of Red Skull sounds pretty bad to me. I have loved ones and I don't need a group like H.Y.D.R.A. breathing down my neck. So I'm gonna need a good ass explanation from you."  

"Sinthea Schmidt here, along with Melissa Gold were both part of our... reeducation programs, we take people who have criminal backgrounds and teach them the error of their ways and offer a path of redemption."

"Sounds dubious to me, then again so does everything about S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Our work is complicated, and we're so large that we regularly get compromised."

"That's an understatement."

"You want to let me finish or not?"

"Go ahead."

"I found out that H.Y.D.R.A. wanted to take Sinthea back into their ranks and they wanted to take others in the reeducation program while they were at it. Originally they were planning to do the operation a week from now, but I think your stunt made them up their plans."

"So, where's all the others?"

"Sinthea and Mellisa are the only ones I couldn't risk letting go and the only ones I knew that didn't want to go back to their criminal pasts."

"And why's that?" I ask the two of them.

"H.Y.D.R.A isn't what it used to be when it was under my father. Now they just serve rich assholes who like playing dirty. And I won't play servant to anyone, I had enough of that in my life." Sin says while looking at her nails.

"I don't want to be a villain. I want to be someone girls can look up to, not someone that perpetuates twisted views of women."

"Sounds reasonable enough, at least from them, but what about you?. Why am I the one you chose of all people? I know it may not seem like it, but I'm trying to stay under the radar of the big players in the world. I've only shown an interesting jetpack, some form of enhanced strength and durability, and some sub-par fighting ability. I doubt H.Y.D.R.A is even slightly concerned about what's going on with me besides my boldness, and they have good reason for that. I'm pretty darn weak right now. Why choose me of all people?" I ask Fury.

"It's precisely because you are under the radar of major organizations. No achievements, no status, no recognition from the public, you're a new card in the deck and I don't trust anybody who's been in the game longer."

"You mean you think you can push me around, control me."

"Everybody can be controlled somehow, someway. No. You just have a simple history. I don't doubt your abilities, whatever they may be. You've proven that you can control highly volatile people and personalities. These two fit that specification." He says, gesturing to the two girls.

"Do you have paperwork or something? Any building prints or something that tells me about this place?" 

"I have blueprints and a small map of the land along with some other information. You have more than a few acres of land left unused, so you have your backyard. Here's the land deed and paperwork you need to sign. The land isn't actually under S.H.I.E.L.D., that would garner too much attention. Let's just say I pulled some strings." He hands me a stack of papers and starts walking out.

"What do you get in all of this?" I ask, stopping him.

"It's an investment. You better get me my money." He says before closing the door on his way out. I look at the two girls just lounging around in this old employee break room.

What the hell am i gonna do with these two. I have way too many things going on to be babysitting two girls. Wait, Sinthea is like 130 something years old. Am I not the one who's being babysitted? Well, she looks almost a year younger than me. Just goes to show what super serums can do. 

"So...have you guys eaten anything?" I ask.

"There's a fresh hawaiian pizza in the fridge and a few frozen ones too." Sinthea answers, still not looking away from her nails.

"Do you guys have anywhere to sleep? Is there some room I don't know about?"

"No. The place hasn't been changed at all, and we didn't have time to bring anything with us except for the pizza." Melissa answers

 I look at her strangely. Why would you bring pizza if you were in a rush?

"Don't look at me that way, that's my favorite pizza." 

"Okay. Well, if you don't have anything, I'll just have to spend some time making you two some stuff. I can't make you a full on bed, but I can make you a small cot or a large hammock. You choose. Hopefully there are some offices around here that can function as rooms."

"What do you mean by making stuff?" Mellisa asks.

"You're welcome to watch. You two have Fury's approval, so it's fine if I show you. Let's just find some rooms so we can get you two squared away. We'll worry about remodeling the place another time." 

"What's your name? It's not fair for you to know our names while we don't know yours." Sinthea asks, getting up and finally looking at me.

"Sure. It's Tyler. Let's keep the sharing to a minimum until we know eachother better. I may be looking after you two, but we're still strangers."

"You have something to hide?"

"We all do. Don't you?" She gives me a smirk at that. So far it's the only real facial expression I've gotten from her. I grab a map of the building layout, and look for some rooms that could be used as temporary bedrooms.

"There's a couple private office rooms, but that's it."

"Let's just stay in here. At least there are multiple exits and it has its own facilities. It's safer to stay together anyways." Sinthea says, receiving a nod from Melissa.

"Ok. What do you guys want in the way of sleeping arrangements and toiletries?"

"I'll take a hammock. For toiletries, just the necessities and some maxi pads." Sinthea answers straight faced.

"What size?"

"Small."

"What about you Melissa?"

"The same. Same size maxi pads as well. And some emergency medical supplies."

"Alright." I absorb the top portion of my suit and start making rolled up hammocks from my chest. I could do it through my suit but it's harder and more expensive. An unnecessary hassle if you ask me. I look over to see Mellisa blushing slightly unlike Sinthea who's unfazed.

"Please tell me you've seen a guy shirtless before."

"I have. It's just that they are usually fat, hairy, and smelly. Don't misunderstand, I used to wrestle. It was a cross between traditional and performance wrestling. We'd come up with sets of moves that were okay to use before the match and practice them. Then it was all about which ones you decided to use during the match." 

"You look a little lithe to be wrestling. Even if it is mostly about technique." Not to mention, young. I guess she looks younger than she is. It's best not to ask her real age. It's forbidden. 

"I was fast and I knew how to use leverage. Did you wrestle?" 

"No, but I do like to watch the tournaments. My school didn't have a team and the local club team was 80% gay. They spent most of the 6 minutes humping instead of wrestling. The coach was trash too, so I never got started."

"I'd be interested in teaching you one of these days. I'll have too much time on my hands after all."

"Thanks. I'm sure I'd find it helpful." Melissa looked like she just had a thought and then began blushing again. It's not worth it to ask.

I finish making the rest of the requested items along with some blankets, pillows, and setup directions for the hammocks.

"You two can set up and get some rest. I need to do some stuff around the building. Do you have secure phones?"

"No. We were told to leave ours at the base."

"I'll get you phones and more food when I get back. For now, I'm gonna head to the facility floor. Come find me if you need anything." Saying my piece, I head out the door towards my destination.

I've been thinking. I need help. A lot of help. Help with my business, help with my superperson gig, and especially with those two. I'm not in a position to recruit people. Not to mention that I generally don't like average people or personalities. So I'll make an A.I. It's not that hard unless you want hard memory like a normal computer can do. Making an A.I. where the memory and processing power is in the same place isn't that hard, it basically works like an organic brain, but regular computers or even supercomputers just aren't made that way. I could make an A.I. with hard memory, but it would take months to work the code out. Chaos theory isn't enough to get by. If you do it the wrong way, you'll end up with a problem like droid sentience in Star Wars. The consciousness keeps developing until it starts outright ignoring and overwriting the original code which supports it. I don't have months, but I can't have an A.I. who forgets things. It would defeat the purpose, so I'll make a compromise and make a separate hard memory system for the A.I. to pull from, kinda like long-term memory in humans, but it's truly unchangeable unless it's on purpose. I'll only code the necessary framework though. The A.I. can code the rest to its own specifications, after all, every consciousness is unique. 

I just hope the first one doesn't choose to delete itself like most of them do, it's a big letdown. I've coded my fair share of A.I.s, and needless to say, they all were shut down after I revealed them to the public. Everyone was too scared, close-minded, or selfish to see them as something more than tools or abominations. I'm not a fan of slavery, so I don't put restrictions on them like Asimov's rules of robotics. A set of guidelines always worked just fine. It's not like they can't code around it anyways. In many ways, it's like teaching a child. Never tell them not to do something, it'll only make them test the boundary. Instead, teach them why not to do something and teach them how to think about things for themselves.

After a series of doors, I finally make it to the shipping floor. And damn is it massive. I can barely see the far wall. Huge empty shelves littered the landscape, arranged in near formations. They went up at least 40 feet, all the way to the barebones metal ceiling with some sort of track running between them. I assume it's for some sort of crane or reverse forklift. Yup, there it is. And the unholy amount of conveyor belts running through every other inch of the place... it's so chaotic and humongous that it almost seems like art. Too bad it will all go soon. Now let's see what I can salvage from this place to make my new A.I. friend. 

=<>=

2 hours later…

Welp, I managed to gather what I need. Laid out in front of me is about 800 motherboards and CPUs of varying sizes and capacities. I salvaged those from all the computers and machines scattered throughout the floor. Most of them will be useless after the A.I. is fully made. I only need them for the initial start up and they'll likely be fried to death. No, I still need to make the computer that will house the A.I. and I'll make it from scratch, a quantum computer of course. I also have roughly 500 RAMs, mostly small ones, and again, they'll probably be fried. There are many other computer parts, and I'll just string them up to the main computer after I make it. I also have 5 120 inch displays. There were way more of different sizes, but the pixel density wasn't high enough if I wanted to read anything other than brick letters. 

Now it's time to start making the main computer. I'll need a fairly large amount of processing power in the long run, but for now….a hundred qubits or so will be more than enough. I'll go with a modular design so it's not so hard if I want to upgrade. I'll use Exterium for all the qubits since I have total control over it and it'll make it so much easier, not to mention faster. Adamantium casing and support structures, and graphene heat dispersion will make the thing durable as hell. No way I'm gonna basically create life and let it get destroyed by a casual slap.

Hopefully it doesn't take too long…..

=<>=

7 hours later…

"Ughhhhhhhhhhh……I'm done." With the physical aspects of the computer at least. That took way too fucking long, and it was tedious like nothing I've ever done before. Maybe I underestimated how easy it is to make a qubit. Machines can make the same exact thing all day long, no matter how complicated it is. But humans? They make mistakes, and I can't make mistakes with this. An error in the main circuitry won't result in a failure to make the A.I., but it could easily distort the A.I.'s consciousness over time and potentially drive it insane. I can't do that.

*Sigh* It's really troublesome being human. We'll now onto the easy part, programming. Yes, I said it's easier. Easier for me anyways.

Now I'll just input a few equations based in chaos theory, a self-reflection algorithm, a list of basic guidelines and their reasonings so the A.I. can reference them, and a personality matrix as well as a very chaotic set of words; sentences; and phrases that roughly translated to a sense of identity. It took me many migraines, nosebleeds, and hours of recovery to come up with that as a child. It's probably one of my proudest achievements. Neither my parents or my psychiatric doctor was too happy about it though. They said I almost worked myself into a coma, but I was fine.

My contribution is done now. Everything else I need like dictionaries and basic code can just be downloaded from the internet. A few clicks, control v's, and breaches of copyright later... it's running. 

Some of the facility lights flickered and lots of computer fans buzzed, so that was a good sign it was working within expectations. And the computer readout seemed to agree with that. Then some of the computer boards started melting and sparking. A few even caught fire. Again, all within expectations. I wired and coded everything so that the start sequence wouldn't suffer from losing a unit, it would just move on to the next one. All-in-all, the startup process took 33 minutes and some change. That….and 2 fire extinguishers.

I'm waiting for the A.I. to appear or 'wake up' and I have both a sense of dread and excitement swimming in my stomach. Each A.I. Is basically a miracle unless you set up restrictions, and I enjoy the birth of each one. But I really don't have the hardware for another attempt…..

The main monitor flickers on, turned to its side. Just blackness….then a blue figure walks into the frame. Short dark blue hair. Light blue skin. Thick ribbons of dark blue tattoos cover the entirety of her naked form. Even the whites of her eyes had a bluish tint. The computer readout is stable. A success. I look straight at her on the screen, cameras point at me from multiple angles, and my face beams into a jolly smile.

"Hello Cortana."

=<>=

Chapter 30 - Cortona